


Blame it on the Stardust

by shadow_in_the_shade



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Alternate Universe - Human, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Bullying, Cliches Galore, Deal With It, Doctor Who: Academy Era, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, M/M, Paranoia, Porn with Feelings, Private School, Undiagnosed Mental Health Issues, although "plot" is putting it loosely, maybe me plot with porn, neurodivergent Koschei, porn with vague plot, there is probably even gonna be ONLY ONE BED at some point, they will be ROOM MATES
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-07-28 20:58:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 42,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16249679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_in_the_shade/pseuds/shadow_in_the_shade
Summary: The utterly unnecessary Thoschei academy era human AU I said I'd never write but the lure of them calling each other "Lungbarrow" and "Oakdown" in varying tones of snooty disapproval was just too much. That and obviously adolescent angst, feels and dick touching.I've not checked the archive warning for underage cause they're 16 and it's England but yeah I know there's places where that's underage so just mentioning that before you head in :-)





	1. Chapter 1

 

**1.**

 

The sun fell in golden bars across the glittering white floor, throwing rainbow shards of purple, pink and green around the walls from the tiny hints of stained glass in the windows. The doors had been thrown open on two sides of the room to let the breeze drift in off the sea, and with it the smells of salt and air and warmth that were – what? Theta wondered – invigorating? Enticing? Exquisite? He couldn't quite remember what the holiday handbook had promised. He just knew he wasn't feeling even faintly invigorated or enticed just now, at least not by anything more than the thought of breakfast; and right now that was feeling like a long shot. If he had managed to drag himself downstairs looking like the “Young man on a mission” his father had appallingly described him as, it was only because his mission statement was breakfast and he had left it to the last minute to be in the 8 – 10 breakfast bracket, having hauled himself out of bed at the last possible moment.

 

He groaned, not entirely externally, as he surveyed the buffet table, because frankly it was bizarre. There was _salad._ Who ate salad for breakfast? To be fair, there was salad at every meal here, probably based on the not unfair assumption that the kind of people who went on diamond–class beach holidays in the south of France were also the kind of people who would not dare brave the beach without the correctly allocated body for the purpose. What was a _beach body_ anyway, his mind chuntered to itself – couldn't you just take your own personal body and put it on the beach? Why all the salad and quinoa and sadness? He wondered if there was still any cake, and shuffled over to what remained of the pastry display. He could hear his parents somewhere across the room chirping away in those overly high birdlike voices they put on when they'd made a new acquaintance they were trying to impress. Any minute now it would be “Theta, do come and meet lord such and such, you'd never guess blah blah blah!” Worse, they'd be Lord and Lady such and such who lived _really_ nearby them at home, like oh my god, the _very same county!_ And worse yet they might have a son who was even vaguely his age- _please gods no._ He hoped he could at least get some of this cake down before it happened. His eyes lit up at the sight of two chocolate croissants and one of those little fruity French tarts they did at least do so well here.

 

“Oh my _goodness,_ well isn't that a _coincidence?”_

 

There it was. He could picture his mother's face far too clearly, she'd be beaming; wow, what a coincidence! You like quinoa salad? I too like quinoa salad, let's be best holiday friends!Are you in the bridge club? Theta Sigma doooo come and meet – he stuffed half a chocolate croissant in his mouth in nervous dread.

 

“Theeeeta!”

 

There it was. The initial call-to-offspring of the Lungbarrow clan. This was an uncertain, piercing call of a general nature meant to imply that the parents were not _entirely_ sure where there child was and that this alone explained his not immediate presence when brought up in conversation. He studiously chewed his croissant and didn't look up, swigging half a glass of milk at the same time.

 

“Where is that boy?”

 

This in a mutter from his father, who knew damn well he was at the buffet table. He could picture the nervous, jocular smile the man would still be wearing for Lord and Lady so-and-so, and knew what came next -

 

“Theeeta Siiiigma!”

This one was so light and singsong that it obviously meant _god damn you boy get your ass here now!_ He put his plate of cakes down sorrowfully, flicked his hair back and managed to _walk properly, not shuffle,_ over to where his parents were standing, offering concussed looking smiles to a distinguished looking couple. Here it came -

 

“Theta, this is Lord and Lady Oakdown.”

 

There it was. He Smiled Brightly and Made Eye Contact. It was because of people like this that he was dreading the start of school in September.

 

“You won't _believe_ where they live! And guess what? Their son is also attending Prydon this autumn!”

 

Oh. _Hell._ Theta wondered if one could actually damage their facial muscles with a smile like this. He kept it up manfully all the same.

 

“Actually Koschei's been at Prydon since year seven -” Theta wondered how Lord Oakdown managed to even talk around all those marbles. He started picturing them in the man's throat and wondered what colours they came in, as he drivelled on about the brilliance of Prydon House and its superiority to every school in the country, including, Theta suspected, the one he had attended himself up until year eleven.

 

“Now where _is_ that boy?” Oakdown said in a tone Theta found all too familiar - “Koschei! Koschei, come and say hello.” He did notice however that this summoning sounded far more bored than his mother's highly strung call, as though they had already been weighed and judged and found a little bit wanting.

 

The adults turned slightly, and the boy at the window looked up slowly as though this was all extremely dull and beneath his interest, which Theta supposed he might have been able to sympathise with if he had not hated him on sight. He was elegance personified, a shadow against the bright sun. He was practically wearing a suit (in _this_ weather!) -or at any rate a black velvet blazer and smart casual shirt and trousers that erred on the side of smart and he could see his parents looking from _that_ to his designer distressed jeans (over which rows had already been had) and his uncontrollable hair that was already falling in his eyes and trying not to be embarrassed. The boy, on the other hand, gave him a dismissive up and down glance during which his nose tilted visibly up, his eyebrows raised and the corner of his mouth twitched into a smirk whilst giving the coolest, politest -

 

“Hello” - that Theta had ever had.

 

“Master Lungbarrow is attending Prydon for the first time in September,” his father informed him, and only he could see Koschei's smirk widen into a _kid they're gonna eat you alive_ grin.

There was a pause in which both boys felt trapped and awkward, long enough for Theta to notice how extraordinary the other boys eyes were; not just the startling blue in that pale face, but glittering with a thousand thoughts that he suspected had nothing to do with the sun and sand he had been looking out outside the window. There were galaxies in those eyes. Theta had to remind himself that he already hated this boy. He had beautiful hands too, he noticed, disgustingly well manicured. He forced himself to look away.

“So -” Lady Oakdown paused just shy of an _umm –_ she was not the kind of lady who ever _ummed -_ “We're going to spend the morning down at the tennis courts – why don't you boys run along and -”

She almost said _play;_ an ant nest of expressions crawled across Theta's face in horror - “ - get acquainted -” she finished. He looked around frantically to see if he could get out of it by going back to the table for his cake, but even as he looked he could see a server picking up his plate and putting another on top of it. His heart sank in deep despair as he watched the cake go out of the room. He turned back, gritting his teeth to keep smiling.

“Oh how lovely!” his mother was saying, Lady Oakdown adding insult to injury by addressing him directly with -

“And I'm sure Koschei will be delighted to answer any questions you may have about Prydon, won't you, Kosch?”

It was very slight satisfaction to see him look daggers at his mother as he gritted out a -

“Delighted,” that suggested his teeth were hurting just as much as Theta's, his lips curling around the word in distaste. Theta was almost shocked by the strength of his urge to punch that superior smirk off the boy's face. The adults departed with beaming assertions that they would meet them back here for lunch, and Theta watched them go like a man on a raft watches a ship disappear into the distance. He turned back reluctantly; Koschei was watching him with his head to one side like a cat eyeing up a mouse. This time he did say it out loud -

“They're going to eat you alive at Prydon.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Koschei blinked rapidly, his startled expression so comical Theta laughed out loud.

“What? You never heard the word fuck before? It means -”

“Ugh. I know what it means. Where are you going?”

“Back to my room. Meet you back here just before lunch, and we can pretend to them we've had a jolly old chin-wag and a ginger beer, how's that?”

“You can't just – run and hide in your room all day. That's pathetic.”

“You're pathetic. Watch me.”

“Don't be an idiot. We may as well do as we're told.”

“Aww, is he scared mummy will do him a sad face?”

“What? Oh – fuck off.”

It sounded so strange coming from him that Theta snorted and Koschei looked simultaneously appalled and delighted with himself. For half a second Theta saw a flare of bright blue mischief sparkle in the boy's eyes and thought just _maybe_ he could be fun and sure enough Koschei grabbed him by the hand -

“Come on!”

“But I don't like you!”

“I don't like you either. Let's go down to the beach!”

Mind whirling, chest hammering with sudden excitement, Theta let himself be dragged out the open doors into the air and brightness and the sea spray glittered on the near horizon like a thousand stars against the sky.

__x__

**Look, I'd be the first to admit this au is dumb and not needed, i don't even liiiike the idea of human aus for these two but here it is and here it will continue to be. I also feel a need to apologise for tagging it M/M as I just about always tag my Doctor/ Master as Other....but since they are both cis dudes in this one M/M seemed appropriate. :-) Back soon with chapter 2!**  
  


  
  


 


	2. Chapter 2

  
  


**2.**

He is not entirely sure he knows what has come over him. He's not even faintly in the habit of grabbing other boys by the hand and running off with them; he just knew with a sudden stab when this one turned his back to leave that he did not want him to, and though he would have rather died than admit it, the prospect of spending time, even with someone he has decided on first glance to dislike, is curiously preferable – at least for the minute – to spending another morning walking up and down the cliff top on his own.

“Where are we going?” the boy pants; he thinks _boy_ even though he supposes they must be almost exactly the same age. He simply grins back, managing, he knows, to make it look mysterious, hopefully even vaguely threatening, when the truth is only that he simply has no idea.

“Run!” he shouts and for some reason they do, hurtling out along the path to the cliff top and out into the short scrubby grass, pounding along on the dry earth with the sky laughing down. It feels like a shout to run like this and he has felt it in his chest all his life, a steadily burning fire that needs out. It blazes in him now so bright he can see it leaping out of his chest, golden into the blue. It feels like freedom, and he runs until everything aches and somehow Theta's hand is still in his and it's so unbelievable to hurtle so fast and so in sync that he tries not to think about it too much. He lets his chest hurt and tries not to think about all of it – these stupid summer trips, all the formalities and the succession of tiny ceremonies that build up the structure of his life, all this nonsense and posturing that he has made himself incredibly good at but hates so quietly, clutching so much anger and frustration in a fist tight against his chest for nobody to see. This one though – he wears his on his sleeve for all to see. He hates him for it and is intensely fascinated. He does not want to think about that either, this strange boy's eyes sparkle in his head, why he's not sure if he wants to punch him in the face or kiss it. He's never really had a crush before; he hopes this is not it. When he cannot keep on running he hurls himself down on his back panting, watching the sky whirl bright circles overhead. When he looks grinning to his left the boy grins back and he likes the way he looks at him.

“That was – fun -” Theta wheezes - “but – why?”

“Go with it, Lungbarrow.”

“Theta”

“Lungbarrow. Get used to it.”

Another long pause to breathe with the earth spinning at their backs; he could swear this is how it feels to feel it turn and rush and tumble through space.

“What kind of name is _Theta_ anyway? Why'd your parents name you after a Greek letter?”

“Hell if I know -” he shrugs and Koschei cannot help but feel envious, almost, of that kind of nonchalance; all of a sudden he has the rare sensation of wishing he was cooler. Then Theta speaks again and ruins it -

“Besides, what kind of name is Koschei- unless you're Russian – _are_ you Russian?”

“I don't think so. Touché.”

They lie for a long time staring at the sky until it stops spinning. Just before it gets awkward Theta says, not looking at him, the words just coming out in an impulsive burst -

“Doesn't it ever get you down?”

Koschei looks at him not quite sharply, surprised to realise he has an idea of what Theta is talking about even before he asks -

“What?”

“All of ….this -” Theta makes an ebullient, airy hand gesture that seems to encompass everything – the slope of the cliff top, the beach down below, the hotel and the whole world beyond - “ _You_ know – the summer holiday to France, the _very best school in the county don't you know,_ the people, the rubbish they make us wear – all that _do come over and meet Lord so and so_ business, the vol-au-vents and entrées – being nice to people you don't know and don't care about – all that – that _politeness –_ doesn't it get you down? _”_

He looks away quickly, almost angrily, on the back of this rant, as though surprised to have heard it come out of him. Koschei stares for a moment, not sure what to make of this strange boy, wondering why his heart is pounding so loud he can hear the battering drum beat of it in his head. He feels his heart in his throat to hear all of this out loud, all these secret things he's thought his whole life and did not think it was even legal to express out loud. For a long hard moment he wonders how this boy _dares_ say it, let alone seem to expect a reply and he is even more shocked to hear himself make it -

“I hate it,” he says quickly, ears burning, the retort more vicious than he knew it would be - “Yes. I hate it all of it.”

Theta looks at him, flushing; Koschei is almost embarrassed at the flash and fire in his eyes; he hides his own expression well, he knows he does, he's practised in the mirror since he was four. This boy wears his feelings like a brightly coloured robe for all to see and it is blinding.

“Doesn't it make you want to -”

“Destroy it,” he nods - “I want to burn society to the ground.”

“I was going to say run away.”

“Yeah.” Koschei swallows - “I was gonna say that.”

“You're a little scary,” Theta says mildly, looking at him curiously; it makes him feel weird, awkward – _shy._ Its bizarre.

“Run where though?”

“Anywhere I -” he breaks off as though suddenly losing interest in the conversation, pressing his hand to his stomach which suddenly makes a noise that anyone can hear -

“Town. Well you know – that village down the hill. Isn't there a shop full of cake?”

“I believe we call them _patisseries.”_

“Fuck off, I know what a patisserie is. I'm hungry. Shall we?”

He is already standing up, holding out a hand which Koschei finds himself taking, hauling himself up off the ground and – just like the last time – finding he does not want to let go of that hand when he should. He takes it back with the palm tingling, brushing it against his legs until the tingling stops. It does not really stop; even when he decides that it must have.

“You just gonna stare at your hand all day or you coming with?”

He drops his hand, blushing. Theta smiles in that curious manner and he's almost certain, out of nowhere, that he's noticing the blush and likes it. It's the weirdest sensation suddenly, almost as though – but this is silly – he can pick the thought out of the other boy's mind.

“Fine. Cake. C'mon.”

Later he will only remember snatches of their conversation that day; he will remember fragments of words like kingfishers darting through the sparkle, he will remember moments as though they are photos but not necessarily be able to string the events together in any sensible pattern.

  
  


He remembers continuing their conversation down the hill and into town, how Theta laughed when he grumbled about his parents (“I just want to tell them dear god I'm sixteen, I'm not a child any more, but I'm not the actual little mermaid so it's not gonna happen.”) That golden russet feeling of satisfaction at being found funny. He remembers the way the little houses in the village gleamed in the sunlight, all flaking golden plaster and spiderweb cracks (“Do you think it _really_ cracks like that or do the French just paint them on for the holidaymakers?”)

He remembers the shop (“You know _technically_ I'd say more boulangerie than patisserie” - “I _can_ kill you”) - he could hardly forget how much cake one person could actually deal with, plus the entire baguettes Theta managed to stuff first into a bag and then his face which resulted in their laughing like idiots at an explosion of internet memes, himself yelling “HE SHOVES THE BREADSTICKS IN HIS BAG” and Theta returning with “I am forcibly removed from Pont-Sur-Le-Mer!” The two of them running again, ungainly, unfettered back out into the blue, tumbling back onto the ground and eating like animals with a fresh kill. Or more, as he does not hesitate to say _Theta_ eating like a wild thing while he nibbled gently at a fruit pastry and watched him with a raised eyebrow wondering where in the world it all _went._

It was like – he reflects later that night, alone in bed, staring at the ceiling in the moonlight and listening to the gentle hushing of the sea outside – it was flying being with Theta, like a bird let out of a cage he had not fully realised he was in. It was like fire and ice and starlight all at once. It was like something in him had cried out in relief a jubilant _Yes! You!_ To resound around the dome of the sky. He thinks about those berry – bright eyes, that grin, the hair that kept falling in front of his eyes and how he wanted to push it back and it's more than all those things, it's the feeling like something has come loose in his chest and he can hear it stomping and feel it dancing in there ready to come out. Restless he stands on his balcony looking up at the stars, at that night time dome of sky that has never beckoned to him, never really felt large like people said it should. Until now he always felt hemmed in by it, too big for this planet, trapped like a bug beneath a bowl and no amount of stars in that sky would make the universe feel big enough for him. Tonight it feels blown open, tonight he thinks he could take on every star in the universe if his tingling hand could stay all the time in the electric contact he felt today.

He stares at his hand held out against the stars, hold it out to blot out half the sky. When he curls his fingers into a fist he imagines he can see the crushed stardust fall.

__x__

  
  


  
  


 


	3. Chapter 3

  
  


**3.**

  
  


The next day they meet in the hotel foyer accidentally-on-purpose, though Theta is frankly impressed at how neatly he manages to pull it off; he suspects he even comes off as cool and nonchalant as he tries to be and is proud of himself for it. They hire bikes and head out to the river, spend the day jumping off rocks, floating downstream, splashing and shouting and having perhaps the best time he will never admit he has had. It's another of those scorching hot days and the sun glints silver like knives off the water but sharp as it looks it's sweet and cool on diving in and the tone of the morning is the most curious combination of this blissful peace and pleasure and one of heart pounding, apparently inexplicable excitement. He thinks nothing of running half naked into the water, yelling and kicking spray in Koschei's face before the other boy is even half undressed. He laughs at Koschei's almost shy hesitation in joining him, which lasts only long enough for him to make the decision to splash him back. Between bouts of exuberant play and floating downstream through the deep blue water he finds himself unable to stop noticing how beautiful Koschei is. _Beautiful_ is the word that hits him too, and it alarms him at least as much as that funny feeling where it's like his chest goes tight and he forgets to breathe. He convinces himself so heartily as to uncertainty on what the feeling means that he starts to wonder if he has chest problems right up until he finds himself standing on top of a rock so high there is a definite degree of idiocy in his intent to jump from it. Suddenly, on top of that rock, looking down with a grin to where Koschei is yelling - “Don't you dare! You'll die!” seeing all the angles and curves of him and the water on his skin like amber in the sun - he realises that he has suddenly become painfully hard. His smile fades into a blush realising how visible he is, how high up, and he does the only thing he can think to do to hide it and jumps. The very instant of not dying on potential impact with hidden rocks is relief but down he sinks for what feels like a terrible time, wondering briefly if he is after all going to drown and die all because of his dick. Somehow he fights the urge to thrash out with all limbs but even so his ascent back up seems to take far too long until he breaks the surface with the most wonderful gulp of air before Koschei is in his face, clumsily whacking him for worrying him like that -

“You were under there _ages!_ Don't do that to me!”

-like they had known each other forever; he grins and whacks him back, Koschei swimming off fast yelling “My turn!” taking the jump just to pay him back and god it does because he could swear it feels longer waiting for his friend to resurface than it even felt to be under. He ignores the strange thought _if you die my life is over before it ever began_ that darts past him like a silver fish, frowning at the sight of it in his own head.

Later they lie on the bank, drying off in the sun, watching the kids jumping off the bridge that spans the gorge this river runs through. The jump looks like an impossible one and they laugh to see the adults hold their breath every time a kid goes down, waiting for them to resurface, both of them ignoring the fact that they _may_ have worried themselves similarly when each other went down for too long. Theta squints up at the sun for a long time listening to the splashes and shouting in the water and the nearer, rattling sound of Koschei running tiny pebbles and shingle through his fingers _like stardust,_ he thinks, and frowns at himself. He finds himself afraid to break the silence, his mind prickling more and more aware with the idea of what's happening here and not sure if he likes it or not. In the end it is Koschei who breaks the silence.

“When do you go home?” Theta bites his lip, two days ago he couldn't wait, now it seems too soon.

“Four days” he says - “Flying back Saturday. You?”

“Same, Saturday – Montpellier to Gatwick – same?”

“Carcassonne, day trip, then yeah – Gatwick.”

“Helluva a drive home.”

“Yeah it's a long – how did you know?”

“Dude -” Koschei turns his head and he cannot help but like the sly glimmer he sees in his eyes and he notices for the first time how blue they are, startlingly so with that hair and complexion. Oh god, there are galaxies in his eyes - “I can see your house from my bedroom window.”

“Okay, you're just being creepy now.”

“No, it's not my fault we're pretty much neighbours.”

“Weirdo. We don't _have_ neighbours – we live in the middle of nowhere, whole bunch of fields, nearest house is this massive fucking estate -” _Oh_ he stops himself _shit -_ “Oakdown Estate – that's -” he could punch Koschei for the way he's grinning at him, remembering what he'd missed when they were first introduced - “Lord and Lady Oakdown – _you're_ Lord Oakdown?”

“Actually my father's Lord Oakdown, I'm – well, technically I'm The Honourable Koschei Oakdown – shut up, don't snort – I'll only be Lord Oakdown on his death. But yeah, you know Lungbarrow farm used to be part of our estate, technically – I own your ass.”

Theta frowns, unsure if this is irritating or oddly arousing.

“Shut up. It's renovated. Hasn't been a farm in centuries.”

“So why is there a barn in your west field?”

“I dunno. Dad thought it was picturesque or some shit. I like that barn. I used to sneak out at night and sleep in the hay bales when I was kid -”

“ _Hay bales.”_ He says it like it's something nasty.

“Yes, your lordship, in case you didn't know, hay is a dried grass product they feed to horses -”

“I know what it is you ass, we -”

“You have horses, don't you? Aww, for shit's sake.” Theta pauses, getting an image - “Do you ride and everything?” _dick, no,_ he thinks desperately.

“Sometimes,” Koschei shrugs, abominably carelessly.

“God, I bet your ancestors went hunting and everything. Everyone knows the gentry are a bunch of wankers.”

“Well I bet _your_ ancestors pushed mine in ditches when they tried it. Anyway no we don't, it's -” Theta smirks to hear him struggle for the right word without sounding soft - “It's mean,” he finishes unsuccessfully.

“So just deer hunting and partridge shooting then?”

“Shut up farm boy. I'd never hurt a bird. I like birds.”

Theta snorts again but stops himself when he sees Koschei actually going red.

“I didn't mean like that”. Theta forces himself to pause; he'd known the _I'm gay, you're gay_ conversation would come up eventually but it seemed loaded with too much potential to be safe. Koschei, clearly taking his silence as judgement, adds -

“Oh because you're _so_ not into musical theatre yourself – you know – as the saying goes.”

“Actually -” he breathes a sigh of relief, implicitly conceding whilst pretending to wilfully misunderstand - “I do like musicals. What's your favourite musical?”

He feels like they have got over a hurdle when the conversation runs on, both of them admitting to having recently seen _Greatest Showman_ (“So what's your favourite song?” “ _A Million Dreams,_ ” “Of course it is,” “What's Yours?” “ _Never Enough,_ ” “Of course it is.”) And he thinks, thank god, whatever it is he can put it off, tumble it over in his head for at least another day.

-x-

  
  


The next morning, for all the sunshine and blue skies, Theta wakes up brightly, feeling curiously Christmassy. There's an excitement pounding in his chest and an alert brightness zinging through him that he wishes he could not account for but he rather thinks he can and he can hardly stop bouncing all the way through breakfast. Even his parents comment on it when he's up and down in the breakfast room on time, in time for pancakes with a stack of them in front of him. Then they ask if it's anything to do with the day trip and his heart plummets; everything in him sinks, it's the end of the world. He'd forgotten about the stupid day trip. He dumps a half eaten pancake angrily on his plate. It's the end of the world for at least ten seconds before they add that the Oakdowns are coming with them and his mother is babbling something about how it's so nice to see him get on with someone for a change.

Still, by the time they're all in the cars and headed out into to countryside he finds himself oddly irritated, perhaps by rapid cycle of intense emotions that still has not stopped. He is _so_ happy to see Koschei again that it makes him angry, his mother's happiness at him _making a friend -ugh –_ also makes him angry, the excessive excited beating of his heart makes him sick and his awkward certainty that Koschei can hear that same heart beat, the ridiculous but inescapable horror that he might know some of his thoughts alone last night throw him into a sulk so strong that they do not speak for the entire journey, even though their parents have taken one car leaving them in the other.

To add insult to self inflicted injury there turns out to be nothing in the countryside other than countryside. Whilst the adults sit beneath a postcard perfect tree drinking picnic wine the boys slope off through the fields of lavender in moody silence, Theta kicking the clods of earth along before him as they go, angry with the lavender for smelling so strongly and so pleasantly.

“Alright, Lungbarrow, what's your damage?”

“Nothin',” he grumps, angry at Koschei for speaking to him.

“Well there's clearly something.”

He sounds so cool, so bored it makes Theta even angrier with everything, realising now that he is deeply enjoying his petty anger, that he needs it just now.

“Fuck off.”

Koschei stops walking, looks at him hard for several seconds, eyes cold, something twitching in his cheek briefly and a curl to his lips that makes Theta's eyes narrow.

“Fine,” Koschei snaps, hard - “Like I want to spend time with the likes of you anyway”

He turns smartly as if to go though somehow they both know he won't; Theta takes his arm in a half grab, half push and it feels _sweet_ -

“What's _that_ supposed to mean?”

“ _You_ know.”

“No I don't. Maybe you need to spell it out for me.”

“I already have better things to do with my time, just spending it with you is bad enough, but watching the way your parents simper after mine is disgusting, boring ignorant peasants the lot of you -”

It's enough. Theta's fist flies of its own accord, making spectacularly satisfying contact with Koschei's face. His eyes widen in surprise at himself, horror and no little delight as the boy staggers back shocked and clutching his nose -

“You piece of shit!” and it would be unclear who is more startled when he springs back like a tiger, punching Theta back in a beautifully similar manner -

“Fucking stuck up arrogant cunt!”

This time Theta hits back fast and after a flurry of good punches they are both kicking up lavender dust and grappling on the ground, all room for sensible thought blown out of his head because the pain and violence and adrenaline rush are so exactly what he has been needing that it's brilliant and even though Koschei fights back satisfyingly hard and with underhand viciousness he knows he's got this and after several minutes of thumping and grappling, grunting and growling he has the smaller boy pinned on his back, both wrists held tight to breaking point in one hand and the other ready to punch again. Koschei actually spits at him, and he pushes him down with a slam into the ground and is half a second from another punch to the face when he realises exactly how hard he is and how radiantly his aching body is tingling at the physicality of it all. It's nothing he's ever felt before, and he stops, startled and panting, heart hammering ready to burst his chest and he realises that Koschei is just as hard as he is and he can feel the length of it brushing ever so slightly against his own, and he's never even hit anyone before let alone – all of a sudden he cannot take his eyes off Koschei's lips and his fist unclenches slowly and he shifts slightly, not sure if the way his hips move forward is intentional or not but he has never quite felt a charge like when he feels their cocks gently rub together through layers of fabric and fury -

“I've wanted to do that since I first set eyes on you, Oakdown,” he snarls softly.

“Which bit?” Koschei spits back, jerking his hips into the press of Theta's cock almost angrily - “Hit me or fuck me?”

“No I -” he gulps, pulling back, not quite able to cope with him actually _saying_ it - “I didn't – I don't – I'm not gonna -” he pulls back quickly, face on fire, and scuttles a short distant away on his backside, crossing his legs in under him and all but curling into a ball, staring intently down at his own hands in his lap, knowing that he _did,_ he _does_ and he might well; _knowing_ as he has never known anything so certainly that he wants Koschei desperately and has done from the first. For a several long minutes he sits like that, breathing hard, watching Koschei out of the corner of his eye as he picks himself up and settles watching him from a short distance, not sure if the look in those ice blue eyes is wary or predatory. Somehow he suspects the boy is capable of both simultaneously. He remains still as Koschei shuffles quietly closer, so close he can just about feel his breath near his face when he says, quietly, matter of fact and deadly, almost spitefully -

“Yes you do.”

He whips his head around furiously, no less because Koschei's breath on him has sharpened the arousal he is trying so violently to ignore into a knife edge. He can feel a snarl pull at his lips that falls instantly into a a hopeless, mouth-open look of helplessness to see the same fight in those eyes, staring at him both knowingly yet somehow utterly guilelessly. _Oh god,_ he thinks and _help –_ tasting Koschei's exhalation of air, feeling his mouth under his before it's even there and then it is and it's clumsy and perfect and urgent and tentative and he is attacking and attacked and everything all at once and there is not enough space in the body and mind to hold all of this, he might explode, screaming and crying and laughing on the inside and kissing has never felt like this, he had not even imagined it could. Pulling each other closer still feels like a fight and in a way it is, he's furious for feeling like this but does not know who or what to be furious with. He hopes to god his kisses hurt but all his head can hear is his heart beat yelling _you yes you_ and _closer._ He twists himself awkwardly to try and pull Koschei closer and for a moment it's an ineffectual fumble until the other boy lifts himself onto his knees pulling himself almost into Theta's lap, fingers digging into his shoulders positively possessively but it's Theta who leans up, clutching the back of his head and darting in to kiss him like a lion taking prey between its teeth. _Don't look at me like that,_ he thinks because the polite veneer of Koschei's face seems to have cracked and there is so much beneath it it's unbearable, savagery and hope and neediness, cruelty and want and distress, he can almost hear an answering thought of _hate you, I hate you, yes I hate you too._ This time when his cock brushes against Koschei's he does not try to hide it, pushing in, nudging up close and desperate , seeking more, please; more of this friction that feels sweeter than any sensation he has ever felt and he can feel Koschei's hips answering, rolling against him helplessly, and he cannot look at him, just twists his hands in his hair, feeling the warmth of it and the cool of his cheek, fingers brushing face and neck, rocking against him, squirming and grinding them together, drowning in sensation – it's like going under all over again, not knowing quite if he will ever resurface. He can't tell what breaks him the most, his own cock being so much harder than he has ever been or feeling the hard length of Koschei's tight inside his trousers, wishing he could get closer, get beneath their clothes and feel so much more of the cool skin beneath his fingers but he could not break this rhythm for the world. He pulls back his spinning head to take a lungful of breath and in that moment sees Koschei do the same, his eyes blown almost black and glittering, teeth bared in a snarl and he hisses a quiet -

“ _Fuck -”_ between his teeth, his orgasm escaping between his lips in a long quiet breath and it's all Theta needs, and the relief of his own is like a sudden release from death – he falls back into the short grass, unable to do anything other than drag Koschei with him. He swallows in a breath and they lie in a heap of limbs, holding on to each other as if to stay afloat and – just for a moment – making terrified eye contact. Then Koschei kisses him again and thank god, because the eye contact is too much and yes, he realises, clutching and kissing back, he does want more, he wants everything, mere minutes of kissing and he's hard again and stroking Koschei's cock through his trousers, Koschei rubbing him back with tentative but firm hands that feel out the shape of him and seem to instantly work him out and he groans -

“Fuck yes, that -”

“That?” Koschei echoes, stroking long and hard and from the echo of the question it suddenly occurs to Theta with near certainty that Koschei has never done this before, and it makes him whimper embarrassingly and bite back on a rush of possessive joy before he says _yes mine, you're mine only_ out loud. He keeps himself biting down on his lip when he comes, eyes squeezed shut and the sun glaring behind them, fire flowers blooming behind his eyes, impressed with himself for keeping his hand on Koschei's cock, bringing him with him not far behind and taking smug satisfaction in every hastily swallowed cry. He flops onto his back and hears an answering thud beside him and he's not quite sure if his hand finds Koschei's or if Koschei's finds his but they lie for a long time, staring up at the sky with the other's hand the only thing tethering them to Earth.

__x__

  
  


 


	4. Chapter 4

  
4.  
They had caught the last week of summer between their teeth, tearing it to shreds like a rag. On the last night before flying home Koschei lies awake, listening to the wind rattle the shutters. From his bed he can see the curtain blow in like clouds, hear the mistrals clattering at the windows, the green shutters turned black in the dark. He feels close to standing out on his balcony and screaming into the wind, so afraid of everything it could be blowing away. Three days, it's been three days; it does not seem long enough or to have possibly set a foundation strong enough to stand up to the winds that he knows must come.  
“Well” he says eventually, or they might have lain there forever; and Theta says, “well,” and it's all so strange he does not know what to say or how he feels.  
“Do you do this a lot?” It comes out more archly than he means it to; he'd only been looking to fill the silence, not make it sound like an accusation. Theta looks hurt for a second then shakes his head.  
“I'm not – I never – no I – Kosch I swear – I never even punched anyone before”.  
It is such an odd part of the previous half hours activity to focus on and Theta meets his eye so earnestly that he starts to laugh. Theta laughs too -  
“I did want to though,” he says, nodding - “With you. Since I saw your stupid smug face. I wanted to punch you in it.”  
“I said I didn't like you either.” There's an expectancy in Theta's eyes that forces him to add - “I still don't, you know.”  
“Yeah well” Theta shrugs. “You want me, though.” He runs through all the narky things he could say to this and there are so many that the pause gets too long and all he ends up saying is -  
“.....yeah.”  
He takes a deep breath -  
“So yeah, my pants are a mess. You?” Theta looks down at his jeans.  
“Aww, fuck.” Both of them simultaneously envision a return in this state to the parental party.  
“Plan?”  
“River?”  
“I think so. Other side of the sunflower field.”  
“Where's the sunflower field ?”

“Other side of the lavender field -” They sit up, he points - “There, you prick – large, golden. Flowery. Shall we?”   
Somehow it does not feel sentimental to walk hand in hand, merely obvious, just as it is to run whooping through the sunflowers that are almost as tall as they are. He remembers every sensation as though it was all too much, the motion of running and the hard ground, the rough brush of the tall hairy stems, the glint of the sun in a riot of colour against the leaves and the hand in his hand that he's not sure he can ever let go of. He wonders if it's corny to imagine that this is what being alive feels like. He had not assumed he wasn't, before.   
They run into the river yelling and splashing before taking their clothes off to dry in the sun, chucking them onto the bank. Throwing each other down they rise up of the water together like freshly made gods and he feels it, so incredibly, more than he ever felt it before- the absolute knowledge that he - maybe even they – are almost certainly better than everyone else in the world, superior. He's always suspected it. Young gods kissing, half in half out of the water, breathless and giddy and pushing together with frightening urgency and it's either childish excitement and horniness or it is how all new worlds are made, divinity he thinks, it doesn't feel far away.  
As they walk back through the fields, the gold and the purple and in the distance green he thinks about the landscape unfurling before them; almost certainly he created it himself, splashed all these colours across the world like paint, messy and shining and perfect. It all feels like his.   
And for the last few days this is how it has been, hand in hand on top of the world, spinning with it and dizzy. He suspects there's a word for this, and that he knows what it is but he'd rather die than voice it, besides, it has to be too soon to tell, doesn't it?   
A close and almighty banging sound comes from the balcony, something that is clearly not just the shutters that still rattle in the wind, and he half jumps but he's not he jumping kind. He sits up, then gets up, heart thumping, because there are grunting sounds outside the window – he grabs the art deco lamp off the bedside table, ready to fight off a burglar, holding it up, and heads towards the balcony. Pushing the swathes of curtain aside he almost screams, but again he's not the screaming kind, to see someone fall over from the outside and onto the balcony, a heap on the floor that – prostrate or not – he almost hits over the head with the lamp regardless, but it yells -  
“Kosch no it's me!” and he lowers the lamp -  
“Theta?” it is. He reaches down to help haul him to his feet. “What the hell are you doing? How did you – did you creep around this whole thing like fucking Spiderman? What the fuck? Why are you here?”  
“Nice to see you too,” he humphs, snorting at the barrage of bad language that even to Koschei's own ears sounds weird and somehow wrong coming out of his mouth. He peers around to try and see exactly how the idiot has managed to crawl around the building.  
“How did you even?” he asks, letting Theta use him as a pole to scramble up to his feet and cling on to on the balcony in the wind, laughing and insufferably pleased with himself.  
“Balconies!”  
“Balconies?”  
“Yup. You know like when you were a kid and you hopped into as many people's yards across the street as you could before someone noticed you? Only like with balconies.”  
“Yeah – um – I never did that. Actually I never lived on a street”.  
“Wow. And you didn't even mean that to sound like a bad word, did you? It just comes so naturally.”  
“You're welcome.”  
“You suck.”   
Still holding on to him for balance Theta leans in and kisses him, and he closes his eyes mid roll to let him, heart laughing at the wind and the wildness, chest hammering to be caught up in the storm of this person, this strange impossible and difficult person who comes in on the wind like a part of the howling and it's too late now to be afraid of being swept away because he's flying in the heart of the hurricane now and his heart tells him just fly. Just let it be wonderful, just let it – which is contrary to how his brain works, to what he knows of himself- but that doesn't seem to matter so much either. And the wind batters at them, but it feels like they're safe and enclosed just from pressing so tightly together. It starts to rain and a minute later they notice and they both stay out in it the same length of time before coming in and he is afraid of this, of them, of whatever they are but it doesn't matter because the excitement outweighs the fear. They tumble into bed still kissing and it's curious and lovely and they have not done this before – they've been kissing and touching for days everywhere and every minute but bed is so clearly something else entirely that for a minute they stop and stare at each other with wide open wondering eyes.  
“How did you even know?” he whispers, not sure why he feels he has to whisper but he definitely does.  
“What? Where you were? I knew your room number and I worked it out.”  
“I – yeah I can't decide if you're clever or creepy.”  
“I can do both?”  
“You could have wound up in the wrong person's room of course – then what would you have done?”  
“Ehhh -” he shrugs one shoulder - “Get thrown over the balcony or out of the hotel I guess.”  
“And then what?”  
“Then I'd have stood outside your window and thrown stones or tried the tree just outside.”  
“I should probably you know – yell Rape! Or something.”  
Theta snorts.  
“That's daft,” he pauses - “Everyone knows you should yell Fire! Instead.”  
“Shut up Lungbarrow.” He almost says Shut up and kiss me, but he stops himself just short of being anything that might look Romantic- but perhaps Theta hears it in him anyway because he does and this time it's surprisingly tender, spiralling into achingly tender and clothes are off with quick and fumbling fingers and Koschei feels like he might just come from the feeling of being skin to skin like this which is new and wonderful, exquisite in fact, and he's breathless and needy and stroking and idiotic and head spinning and bright, still kissing, needing this more than he had any idea he needed anything. And his hand is on their cocks and so is Theta's, both of them holding on and stroking together, coming hard and and too quickly with stifled cries buried each in the shoulder of the other where they stay for several minutes until Theta looks up just a little to catch his eyes, his own sparkling and dark and it comes out of him in an ungainly blurt -  
“I love you.”  
For a long beat Koschei feels like his heart just stops; it is too shocking to hear him say what he's imagined himself saying a hundred times already, though it was ridiculous to imagine it or think it, ridiculous even to think of it. I love you, he says back in his head but also that's ridiculous and it's been like five days! Or he just shakes his head and says no and in the end he swallows it all down in one great lump of clashing flavours and says, no less idiotically than all of those options just -  
“Yes”.  
He's not quite sure what he means by it but Theta smiles and he could fly on that smile, so it's the right thing to say and he is silent for a moment thinking -  
“Yes,” he says again and finally - “But it's mad. I mean – it's been five days!”   
“I know. But I do. You're my best friend and I love you.”  
“You are such an idiot,” he sighs - “But I love you too. I think. I mean it feels like everything all at once and I don't know – yes. I do. But I – don't know what to do with it?”  
“Can't you just – feel it?”  
“I do. But what do we do?”  
“Well. School starts in just over a week. I guess we just roll with it?”  
“I can't – Thete, you don't know what Prydon's like – I can't know you from the minute you start -”  
“What? You're too cool to know the new kid?”  
“Something like that.”  
“You know I can almost categorically guess that you are a hundred percent not cool Kosch.”  
“That's not – oh I don't know – up to last week it all really seemed to matter and then you -”  
It comes out more accusingly than he realised. He rolls onto his back in frustration - “You happened. I don't know if this ruins everything or – or the opposite - it changes everything.”  
“Yeah!” Theta rolls over so Koschei can't escape the gleam in his eye - “Change. Change is great!”  
He sighs and then laughs and it all comes out in something between a laugh and a sigh – it's so hard to stay brooding in the face of that much puppyish enthusiasm.  
“Look,” Theta says - “I promise not to just jump you first day of school and be like hey my love my life my best buddy okay? Hey I know – I can pretend to instantly hate you- just, y'know, hate your stupid round face if you like – then I get up in your grill all I like, how's that?”  
“That's not a – hey what do you mean round?”  
Theta laughs. Koschei grins -  
“Okay you do that. I promise to hate you adequately and we'll see where we go from there, 'k?”  
“Okay!” Theta beams buoyantly - “Worst enemy!”  
They laugh and kiss in the glow of their smiles and the wind howls outside and the shutters clatter and neither of them hear a thing.  
__x__

 

**Yeah bit of a gap there between updates sorry! On the plus side I've decided to make this fic my nanowrimo project (yes I've cheated big time shhhh) so updates should come heaps faster for a while! Also these four chapters were supposed to be just a one chapter introduction.....ooops?**


	5. Chapter 5

  
  


  
  


**5.**

If Theta was being honest – and he sometimes is – he prides himself on being cool; he is, he is sure of it, at least twenty percent cooler than anyone else he knows, and he will keep that impression up if it kills him. When he gets his first glimpse of Prydon House, however, he feels anything other than cool. It's a long and boring drive, but at Little Bridgeford his father announces that this is the nearest village to Prydon House and the one that students can visit on their weekends, so he begins to pay vague attention. The mile or so's drive from the village take them through rolling fields and small copses, all of which, he gets told, are part of Prydon's grounds, and when the house itself crests the hill he feels small enough to be swallowed up in the back seat of the car. He's no stranger to large buildings, living as he has after all, most of his life in the shadow of Oakdown Estate- but this is – this is what would happen if a palace merged with a prison. Prydon House announces itself to the world with all the pomposity and grandeur of age and privilege. The fabled spires of Prydon glint in the cold September sun as though the day itself had been forewarned to provide for the occasion. The old sandstone house gleams gold and silver in the light and the height of the building holds it aloof while the new wings reach out to draw a new student in. Theta has to fight hard not to say _wow_ out loud, only stopping himself by the realisation that he'll have to walk the whole length of this drive any time he wants to go even to the nearest village. Then the old car pulls up sedately in front of the main archway and he can only sit for a moment willing his idiot heart to stop beating so nervously, and his father says -

“Ready?” but not in a way that would allow him to acknowledge it if he wasn't and since that kind of thing always faintly irks him he just grunts softly and gets out of the car. Someone hired for the purpose comes to take his bags and he feels a moment of doubtless rather pedestrian panic that he won't see them again at worst and at best has no idea at this juncture when exactly he will see them again. There is no time to stop and wonder however, as they make their way through the soaring main arch and into the central quadrangle where, after a quick look round, his father locates the headmaster and the whole business of introduction and hand shaking, perfect posture and _we hope you will be a credit to the school_ is forced to occur. Theta finds himself already bored; the structure and ceremony of his previous school had been bad enough but if this is a taste of what Prydon is going to be like, adding intense pomposity, grandeur and _a formidable history_ to it all – he fears he might go mad before the end of the first week. He feels, to be honest, like an interloper in this place, uncertain why he is here or what he is supposed to do with this _great opportunity_ as his father puts it; which he knows only really means that his family have spent an awful lot of money to put him here and he better not waste it. He's not really sure what wasting it entails; just that it almost certainly means he has to behave during hours and hours of boredom. He doesn't even know, when the head asks him, what his plans for the future are and wants to say _I'm sixteen for shit's sake I don't know what my plans for the rest of the day are!_ So he ends up mumbling something about well obviously university and _still choosing between a couple of potential paths._ And through it all everyone's smile remains fixed fixed fixed. Finally the head asks him if he has any questions and he does he has so many, like where's he going to sleep? When are meal times? When are break times? How far from the school can he roam? What's the food like and where can he find Koschei Oakdown?

He's been trying really hard not to think about Koschei but the act of trying not to think about something has just made it harder not to. He's been trying to just be normal, to _really_ not feel different but he can't. He's felt all this past week like his skin is just itching and wrong and ready to leap off his body and he knows without wanting to that the itch is a craving in his skin and deeper and that if his skin _could_ leap off and go running it would run across those fields he can see out of his bedroom window heading up towards Oakdown estate. He has even looked out that way late at night and wondered if Koschei was looking back, before berating himself for his sentimental idiocy and diving under his covers almost in an attempt to hide from the feeling. He rang once but somehow Koschei sounded further away over the phone that he felt when Theta just thought about the distance between them, it was stilted and awkward- he suspected there was someone else in the room and he had not tried calling again just a stiff _see you in school_ then without any plan as to when this first meeting would occur.

After the Meeting With the Head he has to go to the Main Hall for Orientation with the other new kids. There are quite a few like him, just coming to Prydon for sixth form, and a small group of girls this year. He remembers it's been mentioned a few times – probably with the expectation that parents would object – that Prydon is taking girls for the first time this year and then only in sixth form. He just bets there are plenty of parents who _do_ object to this break with the _proud and ancient traditions of Prydon_ and honestly it just makes him want to befriend the new girls – there only seem to be about a dozen of them anyway. He hears some boys near him talking about the girls, nudging each other and whispering that there's only one reason girls would come to a traditionally all- boys school anyway amirite? But looking at them Theta suspects that the reason is its outstanding and prestigious science programme and he has a strong suspicion almost all of them are going to be crossing paths with him in triple sciences somewhere or other. It occurs to him – he feels stupid that this is for the first time – that he never even asked Koschei which classes he was taking. He spends most of Orientation kicking himself for this rather than listening to what turns out to be a lot more _welcome to Prydon, centuries of tradition blah blah blah_ and a lot less _here's where stuff is_ than he would really like. He wonders what Koschei is doing now instead of all this.

Then they get given maps and told to go find their rooms before lunch and to gather back in the main hall for the Official Afternoon Opening Ceremonies at 1 pm precisely.

He only just finds his way to his room before lunch, has time to notice that his bags are in fact there and that he doesn't have a room mate – he remembers the head apologising for this in his first meeting – there were an odd number of new boys this year and he drew the short straw although he's not sure it doesn't feel like a long straw – anyway, he doesn't have time to think about it before the lunch bell sounds and he he's running down the corridor trying to remember if he needs to go to the main hall or another hall entirely, crashing straight into a much larger, very mean looking boy who grabs him by the scruff of the neck, shakes him and threatens to bash his stupid new head in. Theta kicks him in the shins and runs with the boy's curses echoing behind him. _Oh joy,_ he thinks; _don't worry Thete you'll blend in, you're great at making friends, hurrah, guess I already made a friend._ He skids into the Dining Hall _(_ which is _not_ as it turns out, the Main Hall) only just in time to grab some dessert (which is chocolatey and delicious) and with no time to look around for Koschei as he had planned to.

The Greetings Ceremony is not only two hours long and inexpressibly tedious but it turns out they have to stand for the entire thing, new kids slightly to one side so that _oh joy –_ everyone can look at them but – actual joy – they have a good view of everyone else and after ten minutes of scanning the sixth form crowd Theta finally spots Koschei, not, it turns out, that far away from him and – he notices with some delight – very studiously not looking his way. He becomes sure in the first fifteen minutes of watching him that he already _has_ scanned the newbies, picked him out and that would explain the more than usual rigidity of his posture and tension he can see in his neck even from here.

It puts him in a conundrum almost designed to torment him personally – he _has_ to be cool, so he has to be chill, he cannot possibly appear cool trying desperately to make another boy's eye contact and he cannot, at this proximity, be even faintly chill. All he can do is to hope that maintaining his gaze will be enough for Koschei to feel it – which he surely _has_ to – and with that to turn around and acknowledge him. Which is not cool. Not even slightly but yeah, essentially it's all he wants – just that moment of acknowledgement. So he keeps staring – occasionally glancing at the great clock over the stage dais for perhaps an hour with no reward, trying all the while to make it look like he is neither eyeing up a boy or clock watching whilst aggressively doing both. After about an hour he becomes semi sure that Koschei is at least blushing a little which he can only be from the heat of Theta's stare, and just maybe he can detect the faintest smile flickering around his lips though it's difficult when he never turns round and actually Theta suspects that it's more of a smirk, in which case, perhaps he's aware of the attention and simply enjoying Theta's discomfort, in which case Theta _hates_ him with a hate that rises in a quick illogical wave, both delicious and familiar, and he finally manages to look away angry at both of them – at himself for being an idiot and Koschei for being an arsehole.

Without the distraction and all its adherent mental considerations though, the ceremony seems to go all the slower and finally, as it draws to its close, he looks back up to see Koschei straighten up with all the rest of them, hand on heart in all pomposity to recite The Prydonian Promise -

“ _I swear to protect the ancient laws of Prydon with all my might and main, and will to the end of my days with justice and with honour temper my actions and my thoughts.”_

 

He assumes the pose himself looking around him at the other new kids desperately, wondering if they don't know the words either or if it's just him mouthing along helplessly without a clue – the red haired girl he notices seems to have them down word perfectly but he notices that the smaller blonde girl is clearly mouthing along as clumsily as he is. By the time they get to _temper my actions and thoughts_ he looks back towards Koschei who – and his heart gives an embarrassing leap – is looking right back at him, eyes sparkling and saying the words with something between a smirk and a snort. He beams and just for a brief second before they are dismissed Koschei grins back and it's unfair how easily it returns all the warmth to his world. It's unfair, he thinks, to have even been able to go through so many emotions in the space of two hours of boring ceremony but he rather suspects it could be something he's going to have to get used to.

  
  


__x__

  
  


**Heyyy people - spot the _Shada_ reference? Also I'm just making up place names here  I thought Little Bridgeford purely because of the amount of small English villages that contain "Little" "Bridge" and "Ford" same as with "Pont" and "Sur-le-mer" in the previous chapters which literally just means Bridge-on-the-sea which makes no sense....."Little Bridgeford" in the same vein just kinda means Little Bridge Bridge......i'm just a weirdo amusing myself ignore me :-)**

 


	6. Chapter 6

  
  


**6.**

On the close of the opening ceremonies, the students are dismissed to “enjoy their first evening settling in in whichever way they wish before supper and the continuation of welcoming ceremonies tomorrow at 9 am precisely back in the Main Hall”. Some file out, some run out, some push their way out. Others mill around the hall meeting old friends and hesitantly making new ones, others just stand uncertainly, dithering over their next move. Theta spends a few agonised seconds not wanting to be amongst the ditherers before he is rescued -

“Hi! You're new too right?”

It's the blonde girl he noticed during the closing words; she does not wait for his reply but plunges on, sticking out a cheery hand for him to shake -

“I'm Romana, this is Ushas -”

The red haired girl eyes him narrowly, not entirely judgementally but certainly as though she is appraising every aspect of him in a not entirely comfortable manner -

“Hi,” she nods coolly.

“We just started. Obviously. Cause you know. This is the first year they've taken girls here.”

“Yeah I think he knows that, Romana. Everyone knows that.”

“Anyway. You didn't know the words either huh? I wish they'd warned us.”

“I was just – kinda making mouth movements yeah – you too?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Seriously -” Ushas, he notices seems to roll her eyes for punctuation - “Did neither of you read _Prydon: A History_? The words are all in there, you know.”

“Sure, because -” Theta is on the brink of saying _absolutely I had nothing better to do with my summer –_ which he suspects will make him a friend of one girl but very much not the other and he's _really_ not sure he wants Ushas for an enemy but he's saved again by a cool voice that cuts across the group -  
  


“Science students! Anyone studying predominantly sciences? Can I have you over here please?”

Theta turns, so do the girls and a tall, lanky looking boy with lazy eyes and a mischievous mouth who looks like he could be good fun. More to the point the voice is Koschei's. His heart leaps again for the second time, but he makes himself head over to him slowly, so slowly in fact that he's the last to assemble.

“In your own time of course,” Koschei addresses hem – well _him –_ sarcastically.

“Now,” he stands up straighter, inflated, Theta thinks, with self importance - “As I'm sure you all know by now Prydon house is divided into four sections – Chapter, Verse, Field and Stage. I'm Koschei Oakdown, prefect of Chapter House which at this stage means all students specialising in the sciences. That means we'll be seeing quite a bit of each other and sharing dorms in the east wing.”

Ushas is nodding to all this as if yes indeed she _did_ already know, Theta and Romana look at each other, raising eyebrows and shrugging.

“I'm guessing from your vacant expressions that most of you _didn't_ know this.” He has, Theta thinks, a positively professorial manner of making himself sound disappointed in each of them personally.

“You can all come and see me afterwards for a copy of _Prydon: A History.”_

Ushas tosses her hair and sticks her chin out smugly.

“Now,” Koschei takes out a sheet of paper that Theta suspects is more for show than anything else - “Braxton- Rani, Ushas?”

“Here,” Ushas purses her lips in what Theta suspects is her version of a smile.

“Kirkland, Drax?”

“Man, this is lame,” the tall boy drawls - “Do we like, gotta, cause I thought I'd like, chill tonight.”

“I am instructed to show you around the science faculty and the thereon to the chapter House common room,” Koschei says, extremely coolly “So yes, we – Have Got To. Now. Lungbarrow, Theta Sigma?”

“Oh. Yes, Prefect. Absolutely. One hundred percent here, yes sir!”

Koschei eyes him narrowly, nostrils flaring ever so slightly under the barrage of sarcasm and Theta's manic eyebrows. He gives an infinitesimal sigh and turns slowly to Romana -

“Trelundar, Romana?”

She nods and smiles faintly.

“Right. Follow me closely please.”

He leads them smartly out of the hall, Ushas following closely and beating out a rapid barrage of polite, appropriate and enthusiastic questions, Theta whispering “You heard the man – One, Two – March!” and the three of them trailing behind in a slow motion exaggerated march which they make no attempt to stop Koschei from noticing when he turns around to find out where they all are.

“If the three of you could at least try to take this seriously it would be -”

“Top hole?” Theta interjects - “Simply spiffing? A fine affair, my good chap?”

Koschei opens his mouth, on the verge, Theta very much suspects, of saying something rude which would be a delight but he closes it again and amends it to -

“You. Lungbarrow. Stay behind afterwards.”

Drax makes excessive _oooh_ sounds of danger and Theta snorts, though internally he fists the air with a triumphant _Yes!_ Romana snorts behind her fingers whilst trying medium hard to be polite and listen sensibly as Koschei eyes them all narrowly, folds his hands behind his back and leads them on through the science block speaking only to give the what Theta is sure is an excessively drawn out and tiresome history of science studies at Prydon. They leave Ushas to show actual interest and Ask intelligent Questions which get thicker and faster as they head through the Biology department and into chemistry, the facilities wherein Koschei is _Extremely_ pleased to inform them are exemplary and state of the art. There's a gleam in Ushas' eye that makes Theta wonder – and to be honestly faintly worried – as to what her interest in chemistry actually is. But he cannot help but notice a similar gleam in Koschei's eye as he shows them the display tanks for mixing explosives. It's the one point at which he cannot actually stop himself from asking an at least vaguely relevant question -

“So you're saying we get to blow shit up?”

Koschei looks at him like he's something he just stepped in and Theta is horrified to find himself painfully aroused by that look.

“We are – given the opportunity to observe the effects of balancing chemical equations within an enclosed space, yes, Lungbarrow.”

“So we get to blow shit up.”

“There is a statistical probability that occasional chemical combinations will result in explosion -”

“So shit blows up.”

Koschei gives a very long and audible sigh this time; Theta suspects that if he could face palm just now, then he would.

“Shit – as you so eloquently put it – may blow up, yes. Shall we move on?”

Ushas smirks, Romana snorts; Theta and Drax high five each other both in celebration of explosions in their future and in victory at getting Koschei to say _shit._ Still, as they move on, Theta can hardly think of anything other than that look in Koschei's eye at the thought – he is _certain –_ of exploding things just for the sake of it. _You would_ he thinks – _under that perfect polished stick – up – your arse – facade -you're just aching to set the whole world on fire._ He's seen it right from the start, that fire, that electricity crackling beneath the skin, twitching at the lips and darting at the eyes, it's what keeps him wanting to get close, wanting so hard to get under that skin and he can sense so hard how dangerous it could be, how dangerous Koschei could be with the right (wrong?) provocation and it makes him want to shiver, it should frighten him – _does_ frighten him – but no more by far than it excites him – _it's why I want you,_ he thinks, heady and utterly oblivious to the continuing tour, oblivious to anything beyond that elegant tread and crackling dark lights hidden inside – _want to run my fingers through your fire, set myself ablaze with you Kosch you're killing me – burn with me -_

“Are _any_ of you actually listening to me?”

“Me, I'm listening,”

“Ooh Ooh “Me I'm listening pick me!” Drax mocks Ushas merrily, Theta elbowing him with a grin but only because he had wanted to be the one to say it.

“Anyway,” Koschei sighs, raising his eyes but even now too superior to actually roll them - “Thus concludes our tour -” Theta _knows_ he can see himself and Drax out of the corner of his eye mouthing _Thus concludes our tour?!_ At each other and is studiously ignoring them - “If you need -”

“Hey!” a loud rough voice breaks in, a large body invading their little group and clapping Koschei hard on the shoulder in a manner Theta's seen a lot with bullies – designed to hurt quite a lot whilst the bully can pretend he's being friendly and fake offence when the victim moves away. He bristles instantly, something inside him screaming _get away from him_ when the boy does not move off but hangs there leering at them all with an intensely stupid threatening and toothy grin -

“Hey, I heard they were taking girls this year and here you all are!”

“Fuck off,” Theta snaps before he can stop himself, the impulse all the stronger because of the kid's continued proximity to Koschei and the instantly flushed uncomfortable look on Koschei's face as he freezes himself, it seems, to the spot, in an uncertainty of what to do. Perhaps they all notice it because something changes in the group and where they all a moment ago had been unsure of themselves and each other, almost all of them mocking every other one of the group and almost all of them especially mocking Koschei, the stranger's invasion seems to pull them together, seeing themselves as a unit against this hostile force, and even Drax echoes with a -

“Yeah, fuck off,” which dual defence seems to surprise the boy and he moves away from Koschei at least enough for Theta's fists to unclench a little and Koschei to breathe.

The boy glares at them all in turn with a final glare for them as a group before spitting on the ground very near their feet indeed and grunting -

“Be seeing you -” forking his fingers at them and keeping up the glare long enough for Ushas to snap -

“Ugh, suck my dick, ass-wipe,” and Romana to start laughing as he slopes off down the corridor muttering. Theta and Drax snort and each nod at Ushas in gentle approval which she accepts with a _thank you thank you I'll be here all week_ kind of nod, and even Koschei smirks faintly.

“Are you -” Theta can't help it, desperate to ask Koschei if he's alright but Koschei stops him with a tight, tiny shake of the head -

“Torvic. Ignore him. There's one in ever school. Stick with me, you'll all be fine.”

“How about we stick with _her?_ ” Romana waves a jazz hand at Ushas, and they all laugh.

“Right. Now -” Koschei pulls himself back into himself with what looks, Theta cannot help but be impressed – like perfect ease, composed as though he was never for a second otherwise - “Get along all of you. No doubt you all have important things to do.”

“Shit, I know I do,” Drax nods - “Theta, you want in?”

“I have no idea what I'm saying yes to but – uh – yes?”

“Not you, Lungbarrow. A moment if you please.”

Theta groans enormously – probably a little _too_ dramatically for the others to quite believe it, but it no longer feels like quite such an issue, but he swaps room numbers with Drax and promises to be along soon and for what seems like a long moment he and Koschei watch as the others disappear down the corridor.

Theta turns to Koschei, beaming -

“Did you like it? That bit where I pretended to forget you even wanted me to stay behind? That was great? Wasn't it?!”

“Hmmm,” Koschei narrows his eyes at him, not entirely without warmth and Theta does not feel a distance between them in spite of the continued propriety of Koschei's stance, even going so far as to imagine that he _does_ feel a slight softening to the tight angles of him and he _definitely_ takes an uncertain and probably accidental step in towards him and it's _there_ so very there, that push in the air between them like they're being dragged together and have to crash to survive.

“A bit too good, perhaps, Lungbarrow -”

“Do you _have_ to keep calling me that?”

“Why? Do you hate it?” Koschei's eyes sparkle and Theta can see it would delight him if he did hate it and then – damn his brain – immediately imagines him calling him it on the edge of orgasm and has to swallow the thought down hard, still shocked to realise he's now not entirely lying when he says -

“No. What do you mean _too_ good?”

“I mean there's no need to be a complete dick? Or is it just in your genetic make – up? I'm really not sure I know how the proletariat live, you see.”

“Okay one I am _not “the proletariat”_ you absolute anus. Two – who says _proletariat?_ And three -” he grins widely - “I've missed you”

Finally Koschei smiles; the fact that it never seems to come easily just makes Theta feel all the more as though he has scored a win every time it happens. He thinks _I just want to live to make you smile. I could devote my life to it._ And when he reaches out with all his limbs Koschei slips into his hug with what feels like relief and defeat; it's like holding on to water and he holds on tight. He wants to screech with how sweet it feels, how perfect to touch and smell and feel him again and he wishes his heart would stop shouting such stupid stuff but there it is beating manically in his chest shouting _you yes you thank god you –_ and Koschei managed a mumbled -

“Missedyoutoo,” which makes him beam and his heart soar, squeezing him tight and rocking on the spot all at once, unable to stay still for joy for several ecstatic moments until a muffled -

“Theteleggoyou'recrushingme,” makes him chuckle -

“Sorry Kosch I just -” he lets go and stops speaking before he says something ridiculous – _I missed you, I looked out my window every night wondering if you were looking my way too_ damn he's so close to admitting that, fatally sentimental though it would be.

“You wanna come back to my room with me? Apparently I don't have a room mate because I'm odd.”

“You're definitely that.”

“I meant numerically. Student numbers means someone has to be on their own. Shut up. Wanna come with?”

“I can't.” Koschei looks genuinely pained.

“Why not?”

“Technically – we're very much not allowed to spend the night in someone else's room.”

“Yeah but -” Theta's brain races, trying not to get itself too locked onto the fact that he hadn't actually said _anything_ about staying the night - “Must happen all the time right. Who's gonna know?”

“ _My_ room mate? When I'm not there?”

“What, you think he'd tell?”

“Oh, I know he'd tell. Like a shot.” Theta looks at Koschei hard for a moment, noticing something in his face and voice that sounds more than just bitter.

“Kosch – who the hell's your room mate?”

Koschei sighs, as though he had been dreading this coming up and knowing that it inevitably would -

“Torvic.”

__x__

  
  


 


	7. Chapter 7

 

  
  


**7.**

Koschei looks at Theta defiantly (because if not defiant he knows he runs a risk of looking sad or scared, neither of which are happening), knowing how he is going to react and dreading it.

“Torvic??” Koschei sighs, struggling to believe how one person can be simultaneously so predictable and utterly impossible to predict - “That – that Neanderthal buffoon? That's your _room mate?”_

“As of today, yes. We don't exactly get to pick them, you know.”

“But – but -”

“Oh shut up Theta, what did you expect me to do?”

He can't help being angry, but he wishes to hell Theta were less perceptive -

“You've run in with him already haven't you? You knew what he was like but you still haven't done anything? What's wrong with you?”

“Oh please, you've been here like five minutes and you ask me that? You have no idea how this place works. You think I'm going to give the arsehole who's bullied me since year seven the satisfaction of just _giving up?_ You really think I'd do that?”

“He's done _what?”_

Koschei could kick himself for speaking, but there's something about Theta that always seems to demand a higher level of honesty than he has ever been comfortable with. He bites his lip angrily.

“Doesn't matter,” he mutters. “Forget about it.”

“No!”

“What do you mean, no?”

“No, I'm not gonna _forget about it!_ I've seen that guy! You're not safe with him!”

“I can take care of myself.” He glares at Theta, daring him to argue him on this one, afraid that he could very well just punch him if he does. For a moment he thinks he will; Theta opens his mouth and closes it again a few times before saying -

“Fine. Then I'll say something to someone.”

“The hell you will. I am not a maiden in need of rescue. I don't need you – fuck it – I don't need _anyone.”_

He turns angrily and storms down the corridor, shoulders aching from holding himself so stiff, but desperately afraid that he's just going to cry and miserable beyond belief that this is how their first meeting has gone. It's so far from how he has imagined it that he cannot help but feel overwhelmingly disappointed and he's not used to the feeling and hates it. And it had felt like things were going so well.

The week between coming home and the start of school had felt like an age. He does not remember ever having felt quite so restless, like something in him can't stop twitching, like the September winds are going to blow him away. The week loped by in a series of social engagements held together by sighs, something building in him all the while that felt as though it wanted to eat its way out, that same something gathering in his chest, pacing back and forth in a space too small for it. He's felt so absent at every gathering he's not sure he hasn't felt absent to himself in the in between times, pacing the house, finding quiet corners to read without being found, staring out the windows at the fields rolling down to the farmhouse in the distance, wondering, no matter how ridiculous it was, if anyone was looking back. It was so stupid it made his cheeks burn to catch himself thinking about it. As though Theta didn't have anything better to do than be missing him! Not that this was what it was, he didn't _miss_ people. When he could get out – those were the only times when it felt as though the thing in his chest got any chance to roar, and in roaring it could quiet itself a little, riding or running through the browning fields, ready with a shout that never quite came out of him that he could hurl into the wind, send up into the grey skies. It felt, for the first time, as though he were trapped; a thing with too much energy pent up not only too often indoors but within the system of his parents society. He blamed and cursed Theta for making him feel it and he wished that he were there.

Sometimes he wondered why he did not just ride up to his door. Sometimes he ran so far that he found himself in the shadow of the barn on the edge of the property. There was no reason, he supposed, that he could not just have shown up; he did not imagine the Lungbarrows would not welcome him, even if his parents would not have been so accepting had it been the other way round. But it wasn't the parents that bothered him. He never did go in and it was always because the idea would grip him at the last moment that Theta would not want to see him. He might have been with other people, seeing other friends, he might – horror of horrors – have invited him to join them and the idea of that kind of _sharing_ made him as sick as the idea of Theta not being one hundred percent delighted and pleased to see him because that, really, was all that he would take.

He had thought about calling about a thousand times, at least a hundred times a day. Sometimes he had got as far as getting his phone out and staring at the number – it even had a photo attached but thankfully Theta was pulling a stupid face in it so there was only so sentimental he could get about that. It still made him smile though, almost every time. Then when Theta called him and it felt like _finally_ and _brilliant_ and _omg_ all at once and he wanted to jump a mile in the air punching at the sky but his parents were in the room entertaining Lord and lady So – and – so and he had to keep his voice down and he didn't want to sound _too_ excited on the phone anyway for fear that Theta would think he was lame, and after all it didn't mean _that_ much that he had called, and it wasn't like Theta was being an idiot and thinking about him all the time and he managed to get almost angry about it and instead of letting out all the excitement that had burbled up in him he choked himself swallowing it down, and was was quiet and short and had to hang up soon and afterwards he hated himself and everything else for not having let the call go differently.

He had found himself replaying almost all of their moments in France in his head as though these memories had already sunk themselves into the gold edged rosiness of the far distant past, moving photos fixed in his album of especial brilliance, an album which, if he was being quite honest, he had only opened now, for these memories. They had been visiting that same white hotel with the green shutters almost since he could remember but this was the first time he had felt himself bringing up its image in his head with fondness as though every detail were important.

As prefect, he had come into school a day early to help set up classrooms and the Main Hall for the opening functions and showings- around. So on the Tuesday morning when the other students arrived he had been up at six and watching the driveway from various points around the upper windows and rooftops. He liked the highest points of any buildings and had been familiarising himself with Prydon's intricate system of rooftops almost since his first days there, which may or may not have had something to do with seeking out the quiet and hard to reach spots that other students had not found out about; or barely any others – even in the strangest of crevices, in between the chimneys and the buttresses of the towers one found the occasional graffiti carving that suggested _Oswald Was Here_ or _Harkness + Jones 4EVA!_ He'd always wondered if that meant Harkness and Jones were fucking up here. He'd always rather hoped so. He wondered what all these boys first names were; strange but not unexpected that even in these illicit trysts and graffiti they chose to keep the names the school gave them. He liked it though; the secret histories and traditions that _hadn't_ been included in _Prydon: A History._

And so; even though it had _not_ been what he was looking out for specifically, he had seen Theta and his father arrive, seen them go into the main courtyard. He had been watching from an upper walkway surrounding the yard when they met with the head and seen Theta looking around and never seeing him. He could not decide if he was quietly amused and satisfied with that or if he was in some way disappointed that he had not been able to see him despite how completely he had known himself to be hidden. After that he decided he might be being a bit of a creep and had not seen Theta again until the afternoon ceremonies, where he was quietly gratified to feel Theta watching him the entire time and could not help but take a rather mean delight in not returning his gaze for as long as possible. It was heady, having so much power over someone else and he could not help but enjoy it even if he suspected this was not the way in which he was supposed to be enjoying it.

Now he storms down the corridor with genuine intent to get away, furious at how this has gone, disappointment and a terrible fear (that he would never acknowledge to Theta) of going to his own room – he is not sure if he is angry or relieved to hear the footsteps that come after him or feel the hand that grabs his arm with a stronger grip than he expected. He suspects he might be both.

“Hey!” Theta pushes him round so he has to face him - “Don't! I – don't go -”

“Theta -” he sighs - “I'm storming off. It really doesn't work if you storm after me.”

“Sorry to ruin your moment. Oh no wait. No I'm not. I'm just – I missed you. I missed you the whole time. I couldn't stop thinking about you and – seeing you again and it's _brilliant –_ to see you again I mean and I'm just worried for you that's all because I love you and I don't want you to get hurt 'cause that's how it works you know.”

“Of course I _know -_ ” He rubs his eyes which are itching, blinks rapidly and glares at Theta because he supposes he _doesn't_ know, not really and he supposes that he should but he doesn't know what to do with this and it's _weird,_ but there's only so long he can glare into that bright, big-eyed, hopeful face and he finds his eyes shifting, his grip and his brain falling apart -

“Oh!” he huffs, raging, but it's a warm, soft rage - “You – you – you're impossible – I don't know – how do you just – say that?” He can hardly imagine it; saying all those things out loud, exposing himself like that even if he had been thinking a lot of those same things, he's not sure he could do it – just lay it bare like that, vulnerable to all and any attack; he's not sure if it's stupidity or loveliness, he just knows that he's helpless when Theta looks at him like that

“Well one of us has to – I have a feeling -”

“Shut up -” he wants to hear it, he does, it's just if he does not do this now – the only form of expression, of sharing he can bring himself to give, he suspects he might not do it at all – he thrusts out his hand, trembling fingers splayed wide begging to be taken - “Take my hand Theta – please.” Theta looks at him curiously for only a moment before taking the offered hand and this time when Koschei runs Theta comes with him, letting himself be dragged down the corridor, hurtling along with that mad synchronicity that reminds them of that very first day and Koschei tries not to think about all that he is sharing and all that he is risking by sharing it as he leads Theta up the building and out on to the roof. He reaches down to haul Theta up through the skylight and stands for a moment surveying the night-scape of rooftops and the countryside spreading out below them which had all up until now been his own solitary kingdom, something he had never expected to share with anyone or wanted to.

“Wow!” Theta stands blinking beside him, staring out with joyous, delighted eyes, and Koschei cannot help but smile and feel glad that he brought him up here. They stand for a moment hand in hand, looking up at the stars and panting, everything, stars and chimneys and boys reeling from their mad run and the suddenness and openness of the evening air and the breeze and wide windy smell of woods and grass and autumn, all the stars whirling around them in spirals. Koschei looks at Theta once and grins like he really does own it all, and after all it feels like he does; and Theta does nothing to suggest that he thinks otherwise, and they walk for a while, picking their way across the roof tops hand in hand and smiling peacefully. It feels to Koschei rather like perfection, all the more so for being so high up and with ever the faint fear of falling that somehow to him, makes it all the better. He feels like they could fall together and it would be alright.

“Here,” he says eventually, and they come to rest on a ledge between battlements where they can sit side by side, still hand in hand, head resting against head, looking down upon their empire. He holds his hand up, palm upturned to Theta's fingers which trace spirals across it that make him shiver and want to positively purr. He does not point anything out, does not go so far as to show him anything in direction or words but looking sideways at Theta's face he does not think he really needs to. He looks around him everywhere as though Koschei has shown him a path to another realm and it makes him smile because that's what being up here has always felt like. It seems to him that when Theta looks at things, the way he sees them is the same as the way he sees them himself and it catches at his chest to think that someone could actually inhabit the same world as him when all he has ever imagined before is that occasionally two people might overlap, and he doesn't want to think it but he wonders if that's not what love and partnership is.

“Thank you,” Theta says after what feels like a long time and no time at all, and all he needs to say is -

“Yeah”. He smiles because it's wonderful to be able to have a whole conversation whilst only using the words of maybe half a one. He lifts his head so that Theta can see him smile and that too somehow feels like giving him something solid, just like bringing him up here. Theta smiles, and it must be to see him smile, and then he leans in and kisses him so gently he could cry and it's really just the lightest little butterfly of a kiss but it frightens him more than anything they've done and he can hardly believe any of this because it feels like they've been together his entire life, like they've always known each other though it's been less than two weeks, one of which they spent apart, but he's not sure he even wants to understand it, but he _does_ want to understand it and when the kiss breaks he can feel himself fly like that butterfly kiss, lazily flap over the stone walls and out into the gathering night.

“What time is it?”

“I dunno,” he takes a deep breath, sort of sad, sort of resigned. He supposes he could never _not_ be aware of things having to end, even when he's happy, even when the world is as quiet and contained as it is here and now.

“Late I guess. Drax'll be wondering where you are.”

“Bugger Drax.”

“Rather not. Not my type.”

Theta snorts; it occurs to Koschei that they laugh in a very similar way; sometimes Theta feels so different to him, sometimes it's like looking in a mirror.

“Anyway, we should head down,” he says, he has to be the one to break the moment because he's not sure he could bear it if Theta did it - “Don't want to miss supper.”

“Yeah. I already missed most of lunch.”

“You did?”

He laughs as Theta tells him his struggles in finding the Dining Hall earlier, during which they both, without discussion rise and start wending their way slowly back to the skylight. Then he frowns when Theta reaches the part about his run in with Torvic.

“Okay you _need_ to be more careful,” he groans.

“ _I_ do? You're the one who has to share a -”

“You know what, let's not? And in fact rule for the future? We don't say that name up here okay? Safe place. Imagine there's a salt ring around it or something.”

“Is that to keep us in or everyone else out?”

“Both? Both is good? Seriously -” He drops down into the room below and frowns - “I am scared Thete -” he holds onto him, making it look like he's doing it to help Theta land - “You don't understand.”

“It's perfectly understandable Kosch, I'd be scared too – that's why you need to -”

“No I'm not that kind of scared -” he takes a deep breath - “I'm scared I'll kill him. Really kill him, That's why I've never fought back, because I've imagined killing him so many times now I'm almost sure I wouldn't stop. There; do you hate me now?”

“No. I'm not even scared of you.”

“I am.”

“Ahh shut up Kosch, you're not so big and bad. We'll just -”

“We'll see how it goes? Yeah. I'm good with that – Jesus it's past nine! When did that happen?”

“Some time past nine?”

“Roof time goes differently I'm sure of it. It's like Narnia up there. Also shut up. You should go find Drax, after all just, y'know – if his _stuff_ is illegal stuff don't tell me about it. Unless it's edible or drinkable in which case share?”

Theta shakes his head, smiling.

“See you in class, Oakdown.”

“Later Lungbarrow.”

His smiles and good mood make it all the way to his room.

__x__

 

**Just in case anyone wondered or was worried - Harkness + Jones is a nod to Jack/ Ianto NOT Jack/ Martha (idk if anyone even ships that? But my beta pointed out to me that I better make this clear!) Basically the grafitti in this chapter was my _Torchwood_ reference, the next one I do in a couple of chapters time will be a  _Class_ one :-)**

 


	8. Chapter 8

  
  


**8.**

Theta had never felt afraid of the passage of time before, but the first two weeks at Prydon seem to fly by so quickly as to be terrifying; and he still wasn't sure by the end of the second week that he had a clue what he was doing or even knew his way around entirely. There were only two things that made complete sense to him – one was that the group they had formed that first night had somehow, without anyone trying or even perhaps feeling like they wanted it – stayed together, converging at lunchtimes and after class, spending evenings in Theta's room or the girls' since they shared and Theta had his own. Even if he wasn't sure they all even liked each other it certainly seemed as though they were friends. Used as he was to falling into a group easily he could not help but notice how unusual and often awkward it seemed to Koschei who, though he had largely dropped the attitude of _complete_ superiority, still maintained a faint _I'm a prefect and know better_ smugness that set him apart from the others which Theta rather suspected was his intent. Still, Ushas had a way of looking at people as though they were bugs in an experiment that had a similar effect and Romana was so laid back as to come across like she really didn't care if she spent time with any of them or not, so nobody was really judging. Drax's _stuff_ it turned out was brewing his own wine and beer, a project which he had initially been cramming under the bed but had since expanded to an old unused games shed at the far corner of the unused eastern playing field, a spot Koschei persisted in insisting he had _not_ been the one to show him, even when they were using it as the afternoon hang out.

“If they ever catch us here, then I wasn't here,” he announces one afternoon.

“If they catch you _here_ you're..... _not here?”_ Theta pulled a face - “How does that make sense?”

“Clearly I have found you lot doing a bad thing – come in to find out more and am just at this moment on the verge of handing you in.”

Drax and Romana snort and clink beer glasses, Ushas gives him the thumbs up.

“You absolute weasel!” Theta punches him on the arm - “You'd really do that?”

“Yeah, Lungbarrow, I'd really do that. Bite me.”

“Please do not.” Ushas rolls her eyes, Theta bares his teeth.

The surnames have stuck but any other pretence that there was nothing going on between them has fallen apart – at least in front of their friends; falling apart in fact on the second day when their excessive bickering had prompted Ushas to tell them to get a room and Koschei had blushed all the way down his neck.

The second thing was Koschei; everything about the two of them made more sense to Theta than perhaps anything ever had, even pretending there was nothing going on, at least as far as the rest of the world – in this case Prydon was the world – was concerned, even the game of pretence had a certain rightness to it. If anything they had succeeded in convincing teachers and less aware pupils that they hated each other, to the point where people paid them attention only to guess as to when the next punch up was going to be.

The first one had occurred on the second day straight after afternoon physics. Theta had spent the entire session alternately bothering Koschei with paper pellets and bizarre noises aimed so that only he would notice – discovering his desk to be just behind Koschei's had been a gift in this respect – and knocking together transmitter systems that would interfere with the reception project he was trying to demonstrate to their professor. Admittedly he had felt a _little_ bit guilty at how well his interference had worked – he hadn't _exactly_ meant for Koschei to entirely fail class but any faint guilt he may have felt was lost to satisfaction the moment he had started heading away from class and heard an irate - “Hey! Lungbarrow!” from behind him. He turned around, not hiding his smirk, somewhat amused as well that several other students had stopped to watch – after all Koschei's voice had had _fight!_ written all over it and there was nothing a group of well behaved teenagers liked better.

  
  


“Oakdown?” Theta kept his voice intensely polite, knowing how much it would irritate, taking a couple of steps closer as though he were merely interested in what Koschei had to say to him.

“I know what you were doing,” Koschei snapped - “I failed that class because of you!”

Theta covered his mouth in an expression of exaggerated shock.

“Oh my god! He _failed_ a _class!_ Stop the world folks so Lord Oakdown can get off! What will the bridge club think? Basically – get over it your highness, it happens.”

“Not to me.”

This time it's Koschei who hits him first – or at any rate pushes him savagely, and Theta finds himself delighted and exhilarated to feel that the anger is real and he doesn't have to worry about parents this time and throws his fist right in the boy's face which staggers Koschei but does not stop him, punching right back and the pain sears stars in blazing white through Theta's head and he throws himself at Koschei but Koschei has his arms up ready for it and they're pushing and shoving and scrabbling, pulling and snarling and trying to bite and there's a group of kids chanting _fight! Fight! Fight!_ until their teachers push through to break it up. Even then they ignore the shouting and it takes four adults to prise them apart and both of them are panting, glaring at each other with burning eyes which want more than anything to just carry on, to tangle together in any kind of savagery they can find and Theta just hopes nobody notices his boner- only Koschei gives a direct glance right at it, looks up at Theta and grins, and at any rate he's glad he's not the only one but it's so _infuriating_ being harangued for the next twenty minutes solid about their _appalling behaviour;_ but he has to admit it's also quite funny and he can't look at Koschei the entire time and Koschei can't look at him because they know that if they do they'll laugh, except when the professor says that if this happens again their families will be informed – _then_ they sneak each other a glance that says – _right we'll do it somewhere secret next time_ and they get put into detention for the entire first weekend which delights both of them since they'll have to spend it together and _work out their differences._ On dismissal they both make a great show of walking slowly and sedately away, heads suitably lowered until they round a corner and look at each other and yell and laugh so hard they have to hold on to each other and then they're falling their way into the nearest empty locker room reaching with hungry mouths, grasping hands, bodies straining and crushing themselves together.

“It's a little bit insane how much I want you,” Theta says, wishing he could phrase it better but then when he _does_ make something sound actually romantic he always wishes he'd been less sentimental so he can't win.

“I know” Koschei nods - “Me too. I could fight you all day.”

“I'm not sure that's quite the same thing – is it?”

“It is the way I imagine fighting you.”

“That's – oh shit, that's hot.”

He's hard again and so is Koschei; they fix it.

“We can't get caught again though.”

“You could _not_ piss me off that much.”

“Oh, get over it.”

“I will not. I _failed_ that class!”

“Oh my god.” He thinks for a moment - “Everyone's gonna think you hate me now.”

“They're not wrong.”

“Oh shut up Oakdown.” He kisses him again. They miss supper again. Luckily Drax has a store of emergency snacks in the Butt Shed (as in “You know they could kick out butts all the way out of school a hundred times if they ever found this shed” “Right that's it. Welcome to the Butt Shed!”) so they head out across the fields in the rain to find the others already there.

“The prodigals return!”

“Did the rain at least cool you off?”

“So spill - what's with fight club?”

“Damn it Ush you just broke the first _rule_ of fight club!”

“Drax give us _food!”_

“Drax where do you even _get_ all this food?”

“Shut up and eat your biscuit Oakdown.”

“I don't _like_ custard creams.”

“Have a jaffa cake.”

“Theta's got the – hey Theta share! You can't eat the whole pack!”

“Watch me.”

“Give!”

“Oh my god, stop, there is not room for you to be fighting in this shed, get off the floor!”

“Hey who wants beers?”

Only the way Romana says it, the word _beers_ goes on for a long time.

Theta thinks if school could just be like this all the time, it would be wonderful. Even if he _has_ always had friends it's never really been like this; not one cohesive group that feels like an Us Against The World deal and it's like that with just him and Koschei too but when all of them get together sometimes he just feels like he can't stop talking which is actually what leads to a lengthy discussion about who they all are in _Hamilton._ One night after babbling, perhaps over enthusiastically, he stops to find them all staring at him quietly with eyebrows at varying states of raised from Drax all the way up to Romana who seems to be in competition with the other two as to who can raise the highest.

“Hey, what, did I just talk forever?” it suddenly occurs to him that everyone else has been silent for a while.

“Yeah only – a lot.”

“Aww shit, I get over excited, I never had a group of friends like this before -”

“Oh my god he's actual Hamilton.”

“You saw that musical?”

“Man everyone's seen that musical.”

“You know I don't know if that's a compliment or what.”

“It means you die at the end.”

“So who gets to shoot me?”

They fight over it for a while.

“I'm so touched that you all want to shoot me.”

“Oh shut up, clearly nobody's shooting you but me”. He finds it adorable that Koschei sounds almost possessive about this.

The other all boo and throw biscuits but Koschei just shrugs -

“Okay. If any of you have a valid reason you get to shoot Theta I'm willing to wait for it.”

“They all glare at him until Ushas says -

“Oh fine, you win. You're Burr. I'm Lafayette.”

Drax is Mulligan and Romana, purely by dint of not having spoken sooner, is Laurens because nobody else wants to be.

“So we're what? Like Prydon's new founding fathers?”

“Blessed Be The New Founding Fathers,” Ushas intones. The others stare at her blankly - “What you've _none_ of you see the _Purge_ movies? Eh, maybe when you're older.”

“We're all the same age, you egg.”

“ _Egg?_ What kind of insult is that?”

“I like egg.”

“Thete if it's edible you like it.”

And this is how their evenings go; Theta supposes that for this he could like Prydon almost entirely and there's still visits to the nearest town to look forward to, something they are not permitted in the first month out of some sort of decree about _settling in_ which Koschei translates as the school's wish to thoroughly institutionalise its pupils before meting out these small tastes of freedom. _Bleak, man, are you always so bleak? I've been here five years, Lungbarrow, you've been here five days._

The more he thinks about it – and he's quite committed to trying to have a good time – the more it occurs to him that Koschei has a tendency towards bleak in general. He tries not to think about it because he's not sure that there's anything he can really do to help and he _hates_ it maybe more than anything when he cannot fix something. He's not sure how much of this attitude is just _Koschei_ anyway – a reaction to the stifling air of discipline and repression he can already feel himself at Prydon but which he suspects for Koschei goes farther than just Prydon, infusing everywhere he goes and everything he has to be. He has already felt the weight of all this _tradition_ and _ceremony,_ all this dignity and grandeur trying to settle around his shoulders like a bird too heavy to really land and it has made him want to run shouting through the grounds and out those gates every day. There is not a day he has not flaunted some school rule and he cannot imagine stifling all of that instinct like he rather suspects Koschei has been doing all this time.

Yes there's all of that, none of which Koschei will talk to him about if pressed, but there's also the Torvic problem, which he will not talk about _either_ and for Theta, with his positive need to talk about all and everything it's more than frustrating to see him suffer in silence. And he's almost sure he _is_ suffering even if all questions, even pleas, fall on stubborn silence, even if Koschei does seem happy a lot of the time they're together, even opening up at times, offering small gems of himself like he did that evening on the roof; an evening Theta's head will not stop Romanticising even for a moment. At times Koschei even seems happy in the company of the others – or at any rate languid and sarcastic which he thinks he can translate as Koschei for near happiness. But there, he can't even talk to Koschei, let alone anyone who might be able to help, cannot even mention his worries to the others for more than suspecting that Koschei would be furious with him – more furious than even a really good fight would solve.

In the end, however, the situation resolves itself without Theta's having to do anything, but given the way in which it comes to its head, he wishes beyond measure that there _had_ been something he could do.

It's just gone midnight on his second Friday night and he's awake, alternately sitting at his desk, vaguely prodding a biology paper he's supposed to writing, thinking about an altercation he and Koschei had on the roof earlier which made him laugh every time he thought about it. Then he's walking around his room, opening the window and looking out at the sky and the playing field and the treeline beyond, thinking about fighting and arguing and loving each other all at once. It had just been a play fight at first, no real anger in it, just pushing each other around (“Stop it, it's not safe- one of us'll fall and die,” “Aww scared of heights Oakdown?” “My arse. This is _my_ place anyway,” “Fight you for it,”) then they had been really fighting and Koschei had said something to imply Theta's heart wasn't in it and even though it was just to goad him it had absolutely worked – he leaves the window and sits on the edge of the bed, smiling and bouncing and thinking -

Somehow this time it had ended with him straddling Koschei from behind, pressing his face into the floor, rubbing the length of his cock against his arse, thinking, not for the first time, about just pulling his trousers down and shoving in but he couldn't have done that, not when they've never and maybe Koschei knew he was thinking about it because he he said his name in a way that sounded really worried and he'd moved off and they'd actually talked about it, Koschei blushing to the tips of his ears (“I've just never – and I guess I wanted -” and he couldn't even say it so Theta had taken pity on him. “I know. I kind of want it to be special too, Kosch,”) and for a moment neither of them could look at each other and then they were kissing which was easier because looking was not required and then -

“Theta come quickly, Koschei's in the infirmary!”

Drax and Romana burst into his room, and he can see at a glance they're not kidding- Romana looks close to tears and even Drax looks genuinely worried. He leaps off the bed head reeling, heart racing. As they run down the corridor students are coming out of their rooms everywhere peering at them groggily and talking in confused mumbles, a jumbled mix of _what's happening? The fuck's going on? Where are they going? Did you hear the yelling? No, what yelling? What's up with them?_

Theta ignores all of it, desperately trying to hurry and ask questions at the same time. The others don't know nearly enough, just that Koschei's been hurt, has just been taken to the infirmary and that Torvic did it. Drax was passing their dorm room just as “It” happened (whatever _it_ is – not knowing is killing them) and raised the alarm. They arrive at the infirmary still panting, wild with nervous energy and half shouting. Theta's leaping, trying to see over everyone's heads to try and get a glimpse of Koschei but he can't and then Matron's there trying to shush them and them make them go away without even telling them anything but Theta can't even talk coherently, cannot bring himself above the panic enough even to ask and it's Romana who has to do all the talking, why they're there, who they want to see, asking what's happened because Drax is too busy restraining Theta from actually shaking information out of the nurse. Finally they get it through to Theta that Koschei is being seen to right now and no, he can't go in because they're in the middle of everything and yes his friend has been hurt and quite badly but it's not fatal and they can see him in the morning. It still takes several minutes of raging to convince Theta to actually leave and in the end he only does when they point out that he's keeping them from helping his friend.

They keep Drax behind to try and find out what they can from him as to what happened and Romana finally succeeds in guiding a jittering Theta back to her own room. She tells him later it was like trying to guide a storm from the centre of a hurricane.

When they reach her room Ushas sits up in bed, squinting and groaning -

“What the fuck Trelundar? What's he doing here? We'll get killed if -”

“Oh, she finally wakes up. How you slept through that I will never – you must be the only person in Prydon – they're not gonna care tonight Ush, trust me”.

Theta does not even hear the rest as she quickly fills Ushas in, pacing the short length of their dorm like a rat in a cramped cage.

“Theta!” He feels like he could take off like a rocket from the soles of his feet, everything feels so charged.

“Theta!” Romana grabs his arm - “Sit down before you hurt yourself. Then you'll both be in the infirmary!”

“Oh shit,” Theta's wildly careening brain grabs this - “That's a good idea! Punch me – I dunno, knock me out? If I'm, in there too -”

“Oh no you don't -” Ushas yanks him down into a chair - “Romana put the kettle on. Theta sit down, calm down, shut up – have some, I dunno – ovaltine or something?”

“Can't sit.” Theta bounces back up like he's on a spring the instant Ushas sits him down - “Can't calm down – certainly can't drink _ovaltine.”_

“ _Can,”_ Ushas states firmly - “ _Will.”_

Romana already has the kettle on, he shakes his head frantically -

“Noooo -” it comes out in more of a wail than he even means it to - “No, I don't _like_ ovaltine.”

“Okay, that's a helluva hill to die on just now” Ushas shrugs - “Romana, do hot chocolate. Theta – _sit!”_

She barks it at him so snappishly he actually does. In the end, with much talking down from the girls and the hot chocolate which is just about forced upon him he _does_ calm down at least enough to stop pacing, stop shaking, stop babbling and resign himself to the fact that there really is nothing he can do until morning. Eventually – mostly because Ushas is making it patently clear she wants to get back to sleep, he goes back to his own room where he absolutely fails to sleep until the others come to him first thing in the morning and they all head to the infirmary, nervous, Theta shaking from constant anxiety and lack of sleep.

“Alright, alright,” Matron sighs when she sees them all clamouring at the door - “ _One_ of you can go in – I can't have you all mobbing the patient so soon.”

The others fall back without any discussion and Theta realises exactly how tightly wound and how tired he is because he almost cries with appreciation that they would do it so simply. He tries to say _thanks_ but it sticks in his throat and he just walks – it's what he has to tell himself, _just walk-_ as the nurse points him to where Koschei is sat up in bed, pale and with a bandage around his shoulder but awake and actually smiling at him with a wearily raised eyebrow -

“Thete-” he mumbles, his voice is a little croaky, a shadow of his usual voice but it's there and his lips pull at the corners with actual mischief - “You look like shit.”

Theta breathes out a _huh_ that he hoped would sound offended but is really and obviously pure relief and little else.

“Looked in a mirror recently?”

“ _Pfft_ I should tell Matron the sight of you is making me feel worse and to send you away.”

“Don't you dare, I've been up all night!”

“Yeah you look it.”

He takes Koschei's hand where it lies limply outside the bed sheet and squeezes it hard. The returning squeeze is pitiful but he suspects the intent is strong.

“Seriously though Kosch -” he whispers, leaning in - “What happened and what's -” with nothing but the bandage on he can see the bruises staining Koschei's body, his arms and chest splashed purple and red with varying degrees of age but just about all of them new to the last two weeks. Koschei narrows his eyes, clearly annoyed that it's been noticed.

“Torvic stabbed me,” he says simply, shrugging, and immediately wincing because it hurts.

“He did _what?”_ Theta has never heard his voice dip so far below freezing. The cold that rises in him is sudden and shearing like an icy stab through the chest; he's never felt fury like it, never, he did not know that he could. In that moment his head feels numb his fists clench, _all o_ f him clenches and he could be made of stone or ice or ice like stone. He's not sure he's breathing, is almost afraid to breathe, like if he lets that much ice out his lungs something will die. He feels himself very still and it's frightening, like whatever it is that's poised inside him could put out the sun with a brush of the hand, pinch out stars between his fingers.

“He kinda stabbed me yeah,” Koschei half shrugs again - “I think he really wanted to kill me to be honest or I dunno – maybe he didn't want to, I wouldn't credit him with that much thought – but he could have done, yeah, he's been after me for years -Theta please stop looking.”

It's hard but he looks down, stares down fixedly at their hands and it's the only thing that keeps his vision from blurring. When it steadies and he can see their hands outlined together, when he has looked long enough to be able to tell whose fingers are whose he says very quietly, in this new ice cold voice -

“I'm going to kill him”.

And it doesn't feel idle. He spends his life saying he's going to kill the things he hates, so does Koschei, so do their friends, what young person does not? But this is different; he can _see_ it in his head. See it vividly. In his head he's doing it. He's walking out of here, finding Torvic – who in his imagination is ridiculously nearby – and strangling him with his bare hands and he _could_ do it, he feels at that moment, no exaggeration, he could do it easily.

“You can't.”

Theta frowns, not wanting to hear it, hearing it as a doubt as to his sincerity -

“Yes.” He says stone faced - “I could.”

“No you can't, he's gone already. Gone. Expelled. I mean pretty much on the spot; it was an actual _stabbing_ after all, plus they kinda had to find out about everything else didn't they? They nearly got the police in.”

“God. Why didn't they? Shit's sake – in the real world you get a bit more than just kicked out of a place if you fucking knife someone!”

“Yeah Thete, but this is a school; here they just call it bullying, get used to it.”

“I can't believe you're being so cavalier about this! Oh no, never mind, I guess I can.”

“Well quite. I'm just that _cool._ Anyway what would you rather I do? Roam the halls weeping? I don't think I have the energy right now, but if you like I can bear it in mind for later.”

“You're an arsehole.” But he smiles, and the affection of thinking it makes him thaw out a little - “Will you be -” he looks at Koschei's face and does not dare finish the sentence but - “I mean I just – I want to make sure you're okay.”

“I'm okay.”

“I mean always.”

Koschei gives the most enormous sigh, like Theta is the most boring thing he has ever experienced, but it's at least a little bit exaggerated and that's good enough for Theta -

“Well I suppose you can,” Koschei smiles just a little sneakily - “You are my new room mate after all.”

**___x____**

  
**confession time - i didn't update this for ages even though i've written like ten more chapters of this already cause i srsly thought nobody was reading it but turned out i just hadn't been getting the comments folks were sending so i am sorry and thank you peeps that have commented, i'm updating again because of yous!**

 


	9. Chapter 9

  
  


**9.**

The emotional roller coaster, especially after a night of absolutely zero sleep, feels almost too much for Theta. He's also starting to wonder if he's even able to understand anything any more.

“I'm what now?”

“Oh you know -” he feels like he might have to fight Koschei – even in his present state – if he keeps on telling him enormous things as though they're nothing. “Just – I have no room mate now so they've paired me up with the only other kid in Chapter who has no room mate – why, I do believe that's you, isn't it, Lungbarrow?”

“I- but -” the way his heart starts racing feels both like he might be having a heart attack and like a wave come to crash down around his previous feelings of impotent rage and wash them all away and those feelings had hit him so suddenly themselves that this is like being caught in a storm at sea and struggling for air - “Are you fucking with me? You better not be fucking with me, I am _so_ tired.”

“I can see that. Something keep you up all night?”

“You did – you know – argh!” he grabs his hair, squeezes his head between his hands- “I really hate you Kosch – we're room mates now? Really? That's – amazing!”

“Shut up – but it _is_ brilliant – isn't it? I mean – you're happy, right?”

“I am.” Sometimes he wishes to hell Koschei would just use inflection, just now and then for anything other than when he's being angry or sarcastic, like he's decided it's just not acceptable to demonstrate happiness in his voice and that's that. It drives him mad. _Koschei_ drives him mad - “But we're not getting married or anything, it's just room mates.”

“Yeah but – just think -” Theta's mind is already out the door running with the implications and potential.

“Trust me. I have been. Admittedly not for long, I've been asleep.”

“Well, I'm glad somebody has.”

“Thete, I haven't slept in two weeks – you have no idea -”

“I might have if you'd just told me – I tried to ask -”

“I don't want to fight – ugh -” Koschei made a face at himself - “I cannot believe I just said that, I'm alright really, I will again soon enough – please I – I like it when you're happy.” He mumbles this last bit, not looking at Theta and Theta beams; just sits there for so long simply smiling to himself that eventually Koschei looks up and notices -

“Oh for god's sake, stop that you idiot, you look like the moon.”

“I love you. I want to hug you right now.”

“I love you too -” he whispers this, afraid someone will hear, but Theta doesn't care because just hearing it is enough for now - “But do not. Please go sleep.”

He goes. Back in his room he spends a euphoric ten minutes looking around the place, imagining how different it will all be with Koschei's things in here as well; with the second bed occupied _by Koschei –_ his heart does an enormous squee that he almost lets come out of his mouth . His whole body feels so full of feelings as to be too small for them all and he plunges his face into his pillow and yells to let it out. When he tries to lift his head from the pillow it does not happen and he falls asleep.

Over the course of the next week Koschei is kept in the sanatorium and Theta goes mad every day not seeing him enough. Koschei goes mad every day from boredom, driving Theta in turn _more_ mad by requesting books and gadgets and updates on class, even – which blows Theta's mind given the teachers have said he does not have to – requesting his _homework,_ exposing himself to torrents of abuse from Theta and Drax and nodding approval from Ushas. Their friends go mad from listening to Theta complain almost all the time Koschei is not with them about Koschei not being with them and from hearing Koschei brag about how he got _genuinely stabbed_ which to their genuine annoyance and amusement has actually made him temporarily the most popular kid in school – that and the fact that several of the other students are delighted to see Torvic gone and there are several versions of a story going around now in which Koschei single handedly fought him off and that Torvic was packed off as quickly as he was because he could not bear to show the school the ghastly scars he had been given.

(“Actually,” Koschei whispers to Theta one evening, “I _did_ stab him back. But nobody even _knows_ that.”)

Ushas especially goes mad hearing Theta and Koschei both individually and without knowledge of any of the others confess to her quietly that they're only this wound up because they think they might really truly be in love with the other, both ending this confession (which she rolls her eyes at both times and announces that “And in other news, water is wet”) with “Please don't tell Theta I said this” and “Please don't tell Koschei I said this”.Theta spends almost every evening he can after class rearranging his room into something he tries to imagine Koschei might like better and then rearranging it back . On more than one occasion he even sticks the two beds together, partly (the smaller part) because he thinks Koschei might appreciate it but mostly because he loses his head with excitement every other minute thinking that soon they'll be able to share, which has, after all only happened once in their time together. He moves them back every time, red in the face and thinking that if even _he's_ yelling at himself for being an idiot what in the world is Koschei going to think? On one occasion, to his utter horror, Drax finds him in the process of doing this and laughs at him so hard he stops breathing, before telling the rest of them who laugh so hard Theta almost stops breathing, or at any rate wishes he would.

He offers to move Koschei's stuff over for him but Koschei immediately shoots that one down. He tells Theta it's because he just doesn't trust him with his stuff but Theta knows he's lying and that's alright. When, the very next Friday, the matron gives Koschei the all-clear to leave, it's half because she's sick of him grumbling every day that he _wants_ to leave, is _fine_ to leave and is bored in here and half because she's sick of the group of them hanging around beside his bed at every available opportunity, especially after she catches Drax trying to slip him a beer. Drax is banned from the infirmary for the rest of the week after that and the others all quickly go mad for the millionth time hearing _him_ complain.

At half past three on Friday, the instant class is over, Theta zooms over to the the infirmary to be there for Koschei when they let him out. The fragment of sensible brain that he has tells him that's it's only been a week, it's only been an injury of a non – life – threatening kind and that he _has_ actually seen Koschei in all that time, he doesn't _have_ to act like it's been eighty years but it doesn't stop him. When he sees that Koschei isn't there his first thought – he laughs at it later but for half a minute his world ends – is that he's died and he almost dies on the spot himself before an apologetic Matron tells him gently that she let his friend go two hours before because he begged and pleaded and said it was life threateningly important that she did this. She pats him on the shoulder because despite how annoying he has been she can't help but like this idiotic, emotional boy. He gives her a dazzling half smile because he likes being the kind of kid adults cannot help but like, and dashes straight off to find Koschei.

He does not find him in his room, but he does notice that a few boxes of Koschei's things are there already so he runs, with no less urgency even in spite of this – towards Koschei's old room almost running straight into Koschei himself who has stopped in the corridor with a box at his feet, rolling his injured shoulder with a pained expression.

“Where were you? We were supposed to be helping you with that? What's so important?” he babbles, and then he hugs Koschei gently but with all his limbs, enfolding him like he would quite like to absorb him completely. Koschei allows this but Theta senses that he _is_ allowing rather than particularly wanting it and lets go as quickly as a whole self that is aching to touch him will let him -

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Koschei winces - “All that stuff Matron said that that I wasn't really listening to, 'cause damn it was _boring_ being in bed all the time - about nerve and muscle damage? Turns out that's a thing.”

“Well yeah -”

“Oh like _you_ were listening either.”

“More than you were, clearly.”

“Well that's a first.”

“Anyway we all _said_ we'd help you with that.”

“I _know._ I just -” he sits down, dragging his back down against the wall, rubbing his hands up the side of his face and pressing in with his fingers as if trying to shape or iron his face back into a shape that does not express itself too easily. Theta slips down beside him, quietly, waiting, hardly breathing, wanting Koschei to _actually_ tell him something.

“I wanted to do it on my own. I wanted to go back to _that_ room for the first time on my own. Without any of you lot _helping_ or watching and worrying about me.”

“It's just because we -”

“Ugh shut up. I _needed_ you not to be there Theta, any of you – I – had to go back on my own – to that room – I thought that when I went in there again it'd all hit me – I mean I don't have _any_ good memories of that room – and if it hit me – I didn't want you to see it hitting me – does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Theta nods - “Yeah it does. Did it?”

Koschei turns a rather pale face to him, a series of crumpled expressions crossing it that rip at Theta's heart and remind him again of how much he would like to really kill Torvic -

“Kinda, yeah. Thought it would. But I didn't want it to. I don't want to be someone who cares that much about someone trying to kill me -”

“That's kind of normal though Kosch – to care about something like that – I'm not sure I'd want you to be someone who didn't care about that.”

“Yeah well -” Koschei gives a sniff and an arrogant jerk of his head that Theta does not believe in but he'll pretend to Koschei that he does - “Tough. It's done. Finished. Done. I've decided. Never happening again.”

“'Kay. Good. Because I'm killing anyone who ever tries to hurt you again, Kosch.”

“Bold of you to assume I wouldn't kill them first -”

“It's not a competition.”

“Oh Theta -” Koschei hauls himself to his feet, brushing off the offered hand to help him up and Theta notices too that even though he sounds as condescending and as permanently done with him as ever, he also sounds just a little bit sad - “Of course it is. Everything is.”

Theta opens his mouth to object but just at that moment the others appear in a flurry of _there you are_ and _where were yous? t_ hat they do not answer, just letting the others chatter on until they eventually offer to get on with helping Koschei move.

“Kosch -?” Theta turns to him, asking gently, quietly - “Is it okay?”

He suspects that only he can see the signs of an internal war waging, gently twitching round the edges of Koschei's face and he prays internally for a moment, only breathing again when Koschei says -

“Yeah,” and he nods, his smile a little forced but his acquiescence not - “Yeah, course. Let's get on with it.”

And they do, even though Koschei's idea of _letting them help_ turns out to be more like him telling all the others what to do and for once they let him get away with it even though he actually seems slightly disappointed when they do. Hours later they all gather in what is now Theta and Koschei's room, tired and grinning with themselves and eating some of Drax's never-ending biscuits.

“I feel like we should have made you a banner or something,” Romana says.

“Guys we're roomies, not newly married – but thanks.”

“This is great!” Drax enthuses - “now we can all hang out here!”

“We did that already.”

“Yeah,” Theta grins - “But now we can hang out here and you won't have to go away.”

“And we're _all_ pleased about that Kosch,” Romana smiles at him. Koschei looks like he would like the floor to swallow him up and Theta puts him out of his misery -

“Okay, but right now all of you are _not_ hanging out here. It's like ten already and we got stuff to do.”

He has to practically shove them all out of the door to the tune of a chorus of _oh aye, for sure and Oh I know “Stuff”!_ And when they are all gone and the door is closed he turns back to Koschei surprised to find himself curiously shy. But his heart lifts to see that the smile Koschei turns on him is similarly shy, almost cautious, but it is real and his eyes sparkle with it and it's all Theta needs -

“I'm so glad you're here at last!” he explodes with it - “I can't believe we actually get to – I mean, not just that I don't have to worry like before but you're here and you never have to go away and I can I mean we can – at least I hope we can – can we?”

“ _Theta -”_ Koschei rolls his eyes at him in the way Theta has come to understand signals affection and he notices for the first time that Koschei is sat on the edge of his – Theta's – bed and not his own - “Stop babbling and get here. I'm happy too.”

Theta almost bounces over onto the bed, throws himself down across it and holds out his arms for Koschei to join him. Koschei turns around and after some amount of awkwardness, and making sure he is not lying on the wrong shoulder he arranges himself happily in Theta's arms, lying there for a long and lovely moment without talking and with his head on Theta's chest. Theta lies as still as if he has a tiny fragile animal curled up on him, he does not want to break this. He feels like his chest was just made to hold Koschei's head, like he's holding his whole life in his arms and the responsibility is overwhelming, like this position now found is where he should stay forever. He nearly says these and a dozen more ridiculous things out loud and is glad when he manages not to. It occurs to him that they have never done this before – just had time to be silent and close and it is wonderful, both in this moment and in understanding that it means they now have the time to be, even though there's so much he wants to do, so much to talk about – it doesn't matter because they have forever and he feels the buzz of it like a glowing in his chest and he's almost certain that Koschei feels the same.

Eventually he murmurs -

“If I say something stupid, will you promise not to laugh?”

“Whassat?” Koschei blinks at him, and he realises they had both fallen half asleep. Also his chest clenches to see that sleepy blinking face - “I'm awake,” Koschei adds, not entirely convincingly.

“I said if I say something stupid will you promise not to laugh?”

“Aww, do I have to?”

“Just this once – please?”

“Oh alright.”

Theta takes a deep breath, he knows he has said it before but it feels different this time; he wonders if it will feel different every time he says it for the rest of his life -

“I love you,” he says.

“Yes you said tha-”

“I know I said it before and I know I'm like seventeen and what do I know and I know that we're young and probably stupid -”

“Speak for yourself.”

“But I do. I am, I'm in love with you and I think like I might always be in love with you and when I don't see you and when anything happens to you or when you look at me in a way that's not nice it feels like the world is ending and I swear I stop breathing a hundred times a day because I just _can't_ with every little thing that scares me – because I feel like I might lose you and I couldn't _bear_ it and then I stop breathing a hundred times a day every time you smile because it's mad how much I could give my life to making you do that and I could give my whole life to you, do _anything_ for you and it's crazy and huge and I'm scared I'm not ready but I guess I have to be because here it is right? Am I even making sense? I don't make sense to myself.”

“You're making sense” Koschei says, shifting his position because even this angle pulls at his shoulder a little after a while - “and I get it. I think – I'm fairly sure I love you too, though I'm not sure I know what it means.”

“Does it have to mean something?”

“Things do - I think? But I know that I used to try and look into my future and see what I could picture in there as my life – and I couldn't see anything, like it was just a dark sky full of stars – but now when I look – I can kinda see you? Like the stars came out. Shut up.”

He can't this time, not quite;

“Aww, and you give me grief for being sentimental.”

“Shut up shut up shut up- mmm, that's nice.”

Nice is Theta's fingers stroking spirals against his arm, nice is perhaps also his hand cupping Koschei's head against his chest; just now Koschei feels very soft and small to him and he feels positively grateful for the gift of seeing him like this. He wonders if anyone else ever has and cannot but suspect not. He finds himself once again more shocked by these feelings of tenderness than any graphic imaginings – and he's had enough to make himself blush – that he could come up with.

They don't talk much after that, simply lie there, Theta thinking how lucky he is, how much he wants this forever, how strange it is to know so completely already in his life what he wants, trying not to think how unrealistic it might be but that's easy because he does not care if it is he knows it's right, vowing silently to himself that he will take care of this one forever whether Koschei will allow himself to be taken care of or not. _This one,_ he thinks, _oh yes this one,_ and there is a wealth of promise encapsulated in the thought and it is the last thought he has before he falls asleep.

A little later they both half wake, realising that they have gone to sleep on top of the duvet and still dressed, sleepily dragging clothes off and wriggling down under covers feeling like the only two life forms in existence in the world.

__x__

 


	10. Chapter 10

  
  


**10.**

By half term Koschei has fully decided that, even with the injury to his shoulder and how it all came about, this half a term has been the best few weeks – indeed the best time – of his life ever. He spends inordinate amounts of time creating lists of reasons in his head as to why it has felt so good, none of which admit that the only real reason is Theta. Everything about him – everything about _them –_ is wonderful, so wonderful it keeps his head forever spinning and his heart feeling younger than he has ever felt at the same time as wanting to do things generally considered more adult than he has been previously used to. It is confusing, and so often feels like it weakens him that a part of him truly and genuinely hates it. He never knew that being in love would make him feel so innocent, so ridiculously wide eyed and open and trusting. He had thought – because that was what the world seemed to sell to you – that innocence was all about sex and not having had it and then the opposite of innocence – what was that – knowledge? He wasn't quite sure – should have been about sex too. But it didn't feel like that. Getting bullied by Torvic – that had felt like the opposite of innocence, feeling such a cauldron of bitter and biting feelings all at once – that had felt like a loss of innocence – the first time you feel you could really genuinely kill someone, the first time you experience real helplessness, the first time you _know_ you have to keep the full truth in all its details from the people who care about you to protect them from hurting over it – after all that nothing really felt scary any more.

He felt bad about all the things he had not told Theta, but he was not sure that he did not feel even worse when things did slip out. The nightmares were the worst part; he would wake up from the dream of being attacked – the knife at his neck, convinced he was still being pinned down in his bed – since all these dorm rooms were essentially the same it was easy for a moment to become confused – he would wake up not screaming but at least growling, making the whimpering sound that comes out of the throat in the sleep when one is screeching out loud in a dream – and pushing to make the knife go into the shoulder and not his throat – it happened again and again. He was not sure if it was a good or a bad thing that every time it happened Theta was there and though when you wanted to wake him sometimes the idiot could not be roused for a world of trying – whenever he was vulnerable and his heart racing Theta would be there , gently beside him – not leaning in too hard after the first time when it had scared him to feel too much pressure too close and he had accidentally punched Theta while still half asleep – but he was there, stroking his arm and cradling his head – the two things that calmed him as though he was a kitten and he felt limp and relaxed and safe again before long every time. Sometimes they would talk a little – Theta would murmur that everything was alright, tell him he was safe and in those moments he would give up enough to let him know the general gist of the nightmare and allow himself to be reassured and in the morning and all through the waking days they would not mention it and that was fine.

And within weeks the nightmares did become less along with the soreness in his shoulder and difficulty using his right arm which he knew was obvious to the others at first even though he tried to hide it and they all managed not to mention it. It did get better, even if nothing ever went entirely away.

One night in the middle of it all he did whisper so quietly he could barely hear himself -

“Do you think it will ever go away completely?”

and Theta replied,

“I dunno, Kosch, time will tell, it always does.”

“Hmmm,” he murmured sleepily - “I like time”.

And it does seem to tell, at least enough for happiness. Happiness means the term flies by at almost terrifying speed and it seems to him there are only two major frustrations – both of them linked to his shoulder and left arm not quite working like they should. The first is not being able to have sex; something he never would have imagined just a term ago could bother him so much but yes, if he has to admit it, since meeting Theta he's thought about it far more than he thought before he would ever care. It's not that they can't do anything, though for about a week (which on top of the week he was the infirmary makes two weeks, which from the point of view of his dick is the most unbearable length of time) – they don't. At the end of that second week in the middle of a Saturday afternoon Theta break off in the middle of a complaint about -

“- and I'm basically never gonna understand this whatyamacallit dimensional physics okay and can I suck your dick right now?”

Koschei blinks, looking up from his homework where he was just on the verge of actually getting his head round the five dimensional physics problem and wonders if he heard correctly-

“Did you say -”

“Yeah. Cause like it's been two weeks and I'm going mad and I _know_ we can't push it cause I don't wanna do anything that's gonna hurt but like I could totally just suck your dick right now and you wouldn't even have to move right? So can I just -”

“Umm – yeah?” He hadn't even been _thinking_ about it but is not entirely surprised to find that he's hard just from Theta suggesting it and he _is_ surprised to hear himself say - “Actually yeah. You do that?”

And Theta bounces over to him on the bed where he's been sprawled out working, beaming and so bouncy in fact that they almost both lose the moment or the ability laughing -

“You know there _can_ be kissing before you just dive into my pants.”

“Oh yeah!” Theta says it like he only just thought of it, and Koschei suspects with half a sigh that he only just did, but then he's crawling up him as he lies back against the pillow and the laughter catches in his throat and they're kissing and it feels wonderful and unhurried and fizzing with that marvellous electricity that torments the tip of the tongue and Theta's rubbing against him within seconds but they carry on kissing for longer anyway just to wind themselves up and he's a little breathless with it and then a lot breathless and there's some nervousness too because he hasn't been alright with anyone leaning over him since the attack and when they've kissed he's always been the one on top or higher up, or they've been face to face but it's fine, he's surprised to find that it _is_ fine and he can't be scared except of loving Theta which is always scary but just now it's good scary and he would not let any silly nerves get between them and this for the world.

In the end they get off the first time just like this, just by kissing and feeling their cocks rub together through their trousers just like the first time and it's quite painfully quick in fact considering how long it's been, and the most intense and incredible relief.

“Okay,” Koschei says when they have breath again - “You can still suck my dick though”.

Theta grins and then swallows hard and Koschei's already ready again by the time he gets his trousers undone and he thinks he might actually come at the first tentative lick and his fingers clench in the bedsheets hard enough it does hurt his shoulder, but he doesn't care and Theta's mouth around him feels beyond amazing and it's like a revelation and he thinks he might die and might explode and the world will never be the same again and he does not last long in the end anyway but frankly it feels like a victory of self control that he did not just come straight away, so he does not care, just falls back swimming in bliss with Theta grinning and licking his lips in a way that makes Koschei want to die again and going -

“Well, how did I do?”

“What do you want – a mark out of ten?”

“Well, I never did that before.”

“Okay.....um …..I guess – six?”

“SIX?? I thought it was good!”

“Yeah, but if I said ten you might never do it again; or anyway you might never do more, and if that's just your first time than you'd surely _want_ to do more and try and make it better- not that it needs better- and then I figured if I said anything more than six you still might think you were too awesome already and not do it so much and our blow job life would be basically over before it had begun, so if we say five equals really amazingly good then six is both brilliant but also gives us something to work with.”

“Oh my god. Of all the soulmates in the world I have to be landed with you?”

“I'm just being logical – wait soulmates?”

For once Theta is the one who goes red and starts to mumble. Koschei beams smugly

“I just can't believe you'd apply that insane Oakdown logic to a blow job. Right – your turn!”

“ _My_ turn?”

“Yup. And hope I give you better than a six!”

In the end he gives him a seven which according to a set of logic that they thrash out for about an hour's worth of conversation makes Koschei the best and most gifted in the world; a conclusion he is always only two happy to accept even if he does suspect this might go towards making him a natural sub in the relationship, an outcome neither of them would have predicted but once suggested seems only too obvious.

When half term approaches he dreads it briefly, knowing that at least two thirds of pupils go home for the week and guessing that Theta will be amongst them. He knows the rest of their friends are, and with less than a week to go has still not mentioned it to anyone that he does not do that, and even though he would rather it _was_ this way he knows that there is some shame in admitting it to others and then there is also the ever present dread of sympathy which would be even worse, perhaps especially this time given his injury – regarding which, his family only ever wrote to him and on one occasion called to ask him if he wanted them to visit, because they _would_ of _course_ even if it meant cutting their holiday in Tunisia short.....

He had declined the _kind_ offer and the second one which ran _of course you can always come home for the half term if you_ really _want to –_ because it was obvious what _that_ meant as well. One of the problems, he reflected, on having a group of friends this year, was that it became easier to compare parental behaviour – to notice details for example – like the fact that Theta's parents called regularly every Sunday afternoon and stayed on the phone for a full twenty minutes. _I think they time it, to be honest,_ Theta said once; _like they've had a good sit down to work exactly how frequently to call and for how long each time to make them Good Parents But Not Over – Involved –_ _or something._

Eventually of course it had to come up, and the dreaded conversation raised it's head innocently on the Monday evening with Theta looking up from a text book that he _knew_ he hadn't been paying any attention to for some moments now and asking him casually if he was looking forward to half term.

“Not really,” he replied, not for the moment looking up from the desk – they alternated daily between who got the desk and who sprawled out on the bed even though if each was being honest they would have both preferred the bed and could in fact have taken one each since the room was two beds and one desk but since there _was_ only the one desk it felt so much as though somebody _should_ use it that such was the arrangement - “Why do you ask?”

“You're not?” he wondered why Theta sounded was it – hopeful? - about that - “Why not?”

“Aren't you?” he replies without answering, turning in his seat to look at Theta curiously; he is sprawling – as he assumed, chewing the end of a pen and just at this point brushing books and paper off the bed in an attitude of great boredom with it all.

“Not really” he sighs - “I used to always look forward to the not-being-in-school bits of school but – and don't laugh and or throw things at me – it's a whole week I don't get to see you y'know? I'll miss you and I'll probably do something lame like look out my window all the time trying to work out which window is yours in that monstrosity you call home and also like – wondering if you're behind it.”

“I won't be. I don't go home for half term.” Somehow the entirety of the dread he had been feeling at mentioning this seems ridiculous compared to how easily it comes out.

“You don't -?”

“No never. I – prefer to stay here.”

“Oh! Alright -”

He loves Theta for not pressing the issue, it's enough or it would have been enough already if Theta did not then add -

“Cool. I'll stay too then.”

“Really?” he tries not to appear to excited, too happy, but he is and he is sure that even with trying not to appear anything Theta will have noticed anyway - “Are you sure? I mean you don't have to stay for me and like – will your parents mind?”

“They won't mind. They asked me, I hadn't answered yet, that's why I was thinking about it – and – you don't mind? You didn't have particular plans?”

“Of course I had plans, how sad do you think I am?” he lies happily, and Theta bounces up and throws his arms around him from behind, leaning into his neck and kissing his head -

“You don't want me to answer that one.”

“You're a nuisance and I don't care _where_ you spend your half term - ” he cannot even hide his smile as he says it, and Theta squeezes him into the awkward hug like some sort of tentacle monster - “Get off my neck, I'm trying to study!”

But he does not achieve further study that evening and he could not have wished it any differently. They even play fight after that for the first time in weeks, tussling their way over to the bed before falling into it.

The best moments, he thinks later, are always these last ones in the day. When they are curled up together like children, or like two tiny mammals clinging together for warmth in a nest. They sleep forehead to forehead, arms curled around each other, grabbing on for comfort and to pull each other close, even their legs all in a big tangle together, and he thinks _I like us, I like me, I like me better now that I'm part of us, it's all I want to be, just us, you, I am you and you are me and I like me because I am you –_ and the thought weaves its comfortable sleepy way through his head and half way through it he is asleep.

__x__

 


	11. Chapter 11

  
  


**11.**

Half term, Theta thinks, feels like the closest thing to freedom that Prydon will ever allow. For him it is more than that and the more is even better – it's a week with just him and Koschei with no studies ( _except homework,_ as Koschei irritatingly reminds him every time he mentions this) and all the rest of their friends gone home. He feels a little guilty about thinking of this as a positive – he _likes_ his friends, for the most part quite a lot – but still, he often enough feels like he would like it if the two of them were the only two people to ever exist.

Saturday morning they watch the cars stream down the drive and out of the school gates from their vantage point on the roof. They've installed a bread bin up here now, hidden down in one of their favourite spots – a secret stash of drinks and snacks; Theta's chewy sweets which Koschei says make his breath smell like cherries, Drax's eternal biscuits (or _infernal biscuits_ as Koschei calls them even though he eats at least as many as the rest of them), the remnants of a once (two days ago) sizeable chocolate stash and the gift of several beers which Drax has left them out of pity, he said, for their “Distinct loser status” at spending the half term in school.

“And hopefully you a have stunningly appalling time and get busted for whatever it is you get busted for Drax,” - that was Koschei's parting shot - “But we are going to have a simply _splendid_ time, full of -”

“And that's our cue to go!” Ushas yelled pulling a laughing Romana along with her – Because we do _not_ want to hear what your time is gonna be full of!”

And that was them off, Theta yelling “Thanks for the beers!” (“That's great Thete you wanna try that just a little louder I don't think quite _all_ our teachers heard you.”) Then just the two of them, grinning at each other, grabbing hold of each others hand and running up to the roof where Theta was currently sucking on something strawberry flavoured and watching the last of the cars trundle out of the gates.

“It's not that I want to be going home,” he says, thinking about it - “Because I don't – but there's something about watching everyone moving except me that kinda makes me want to go arghhh!”

“Well that was eloquent, thanks for that.”

“Not that going _arghh_ is very helpful – shut up Kosch – I just -” he finds himself hopping from one foot to another, illustrating his point whilst making it - “I'm not good at staying still – I get twitchy -”

“Really,” Koschei looks up at him from his position, hunkered down with his arms folded on the parapet and his chin resting on his arms looking down, raises a sardonic eyebrow - “I hadn't noticed.. Maybe it's sugar rush from all those pink things”.

“It's a Wham bar, you epic king of uncool, and nope, don't think that's it, think it's just me – come on, Kosch, don't you ever feel like you just want to run and shriek like you're going to explode and all this stone's just blocking you in?”

“I suppose so -” Koschei tilts his head on the side like he's really thinking about it seriously, and Theta can't help but stop bouncing for a moment to smile at the gesture, which makes him think of birds and is so much sweeter than Koschei has any idea it is that he would never tell him how sweet it was.

“Yes,” Koschei eventually says firmly, almost throwing Theta back with the passion of it and nodding determinedly - “Yes I feel like that all the time – the first part at least, like there's a great big shriek in me – and it's so loud it'd deafen everyone if I just let it out, maybe even kill people, or break things – everything – and it feels like that scream lives in my chest and sometimes it's just a murmur and sometimes it's burning hot and shrieking round my ribs and I get so scared and so – like you said like I'm going to explode but also sometimes I _want_ it to come out - I _want_ to kill everyone with it – yeah -” He nods again, his face pale and lips thin, and Theta looks at him with a mixture of concern and surprise and overwhelming love but all he says is -

“Wow.”

“Sorry,” Koschei looks down embarrassed, which he always does when he expresses a feeling.

“No, don't be,” Theta drops down beside him, surprised at how suddenly easy it is to be still when he's thinking about somebody else. Koschei turns his face to him and shrugs one shoulder -

“It's different though,” he says, Theta hopes he does not stare at him with too much fascination – because it's so rare when this happens – when Koschei actually talks emotionally, and he feels like he's seeing some of the deep down hidden bits – he loves it and wants more so much it's like wanting more of a show that's been cancelled – he'll take whatever extras he can get; he stays quiet waiting for more, and it comes.

“It's not – like you said, like feeling hemmed in by the stone, by the place itself. I like the place. I like these walls – there's so much story here -”

He follows the line of Koschei's gaze, Koschei's fingertip tracing one of the old initials engraved into the stones - a remarkably neat _CS +MA_ that he can only imagine comes from another two boys who have sat up here maybe having the same conversation, or another one, watching the world below them just like them - “Like these guys -” Koschei nods, like he's reading his mind, which he does a lot, his finger running through the wide groove of the _C -_ “Did they sit up here and have this conversation? Did they feel the same, see the world unravel like I do – we do? Did they feel like they owned it- Like it was all huge and they were tiny? Or was it the other round – like the world was too small to contain them? Cause sometimes I feel both? Kind of at the same time? I wonder about the people who've left themselves behind in these stones – I wonder what their names were – what did this C stand for? What did they do with themselves while they were here? Where did they go to after class? Was it always up here? And what about after school entirely? Were they happy? Were they sad? We'll never know and sometimes I wish so much that we could know that it drives me mad – I don't even know why. Sometimes I make up lives for the people who came up here before us.”

“Huh,” Theta covers Koschei's hand with his own, looking at him curiously - “I never thought you much _liked_ other people.”

“I don't,” Koschei says, too quickly - “I'm just interested in the stories they might be and I want to be a good one Theta – I want to be the _best.”_

“ _We_ will be.” Koschei looks at him and grins and he grins back -

“C'mon!” Theta jumps back to his feet, holding out his hand - “Let's go run out the gate!”

He wonders, briefly, if Koschei would have always just grinned back like that and grabbed his hand like they were going on an adventure to the unknown and he trusted him implicitly – but then again maybe he would, Theta remembers he took Koschei's offered hand in the same spirit the very first hour they met. He could see his whole past – which he sometimes feels began that day in August, not three months ago – and then his whole future as a series of snapshots of him and Koschei taking the other's outstretched hand – like fitting together the last two cogs in a system that makes the whole contraption light up and work.

So down, through the skylight, through the corridors, hand in hand every time they fall side by side, smiling at each other like they are doing something immense, like it means everything, like this run is a prison break or the end of the movie, then out through the school's main courtyard and hurtling down the driveway hand in hand, running down the gravel, hearing it crunch beneath their feet, hearing nothing but the beat of his heart and the pounding crunch of their footsteps. How do they run together step for step in such a hurtling manic break he will never know, but he also never thinks too hard about it because it's so right that they be like this, so fast, so wild, shouting at the walls behind them for not yielding up their secrets to Koschei, shouting at them from making Theta feel trapped and then screaming out to the fields beyond the gate, screaming here we come! And he _is_ yelling, he can hear it and he feels Koschei look at them and hears his voice in a yell, not in answer or in question but singing along to his own shout, shouting at the past and the future and the sky above their heads, shouting at the wind in their faces _here we are! We're with you and against and we are!_ It is glorious and savage and everything.

They run until their chests feel like bursting, because they must, and when that moment comes it comes together and wonders how they can be so together in this, like they are attached somehow, sharing the same insides, and he suspects if they were to fight, to really _really_ fight it would be a battle that could go on forever because both of them seem to be so evenly matched. Then when it starts to hurt they both push on, out of the gates and unable to stop for running down the grassy slope beside the road, hurtling downhill with a force behind them that they could not press against and stop no matter how hard they tried and it feels dangerous, like they could die, like they could fall and crash on the ground and when the terrain smooths out they do just that – hands breaking apart for the first time and tumbling on to the ground. It is painful and relief and perfect and not a little orgasmic and the sky spins and spins and the earth does too and he thinks _this is it, this is the feel of the earth hurtling through space, this is the feel of the universe in motion around me – Koschei –_ and he looks beside him and Koschei alone out of everything that rattles around him is still – but still and reeling just like he is, eyes wide lips parted, swimming in the sky and riding on the hurtling planet. _You_ he thinks – _you make me brilliant, the most powerful thing in the universe._ It is an awesome thought, exquisite and frightening and Koschei finds his hand then as squeezes it as though he heard it too and was thinking the same.

After that they walk back up to the school hand in hand and it takes most of an hour when their running away from it was maybe minutes – impossible to tell time when running like that and the world going so fast. Besides he is coming to suspect that time is not what he thought it was anyway, sometimes it goes so fast – weeks speeding by while some minutes seem to last hours. It is not the evenly meted out thing it pretends to be and he feels as though in working this out he has managed to almost own it. He feels heady with his own power today, wild and monstrous with everything he owns, starting with Koschei, ending with the world and everything beyond. He suspects this is not a good feeling and to have it always would lead to bad, but just for now it does not matter. For now it only matters that they are here, together, on top of the world and that they did not even need to communicate an intent to start walking back this way together, even though they were half way into town already and could have carried on, could also have stayed out roaming the fields and woods around the school half the day – no they exchanged one look and started to walk back together and that is everything and the school itself seems like a toy now, too small to contain their hearts.

They go straight back to their room and tumble into bed, pulling frantically at one another's clothes, all that power and ownership and the only thing Theta could even think to do with it is engage in what their teachers would call the most vulgar form of self expression. Sensation it seems, is frowned upon in Prydon, which attitude has only ever made the two of them more eager to pursue it.

Right now they are pursuing it frantically, with all the urgency of their earlier run. The push and pull of frantically trying to get each others clothes off makes them laugh and ache and turn breathless, the laughter fizzling out into the gasping that lies beneath it when they press together skin to skin and hold still enough to think _oh yes this is me, my heart held to my chest –_ before they have to move again. They _have_ to keep moving, to twist and entwine and clutch, to feel every bit of the other as though they have never touched before. It is like this every time – the feeling of never having touched before – or if they have then it was a lifetime ago and they have to re- remember every time. But it's different this time, all the usual urgency peaking into a knowledge that It was going to happen. That It that everyone in a school talks about and laughs about, which is and is not funny and is and is not vitally important but ultimately must be important if only – and not at all only – on account of the emotions and the sensations it invokes. And they have talked about it, they have explored, their building up to this moment made slower and gentler by Koschei's injury and by the tendency they both have – although Koschei has it more- to over think everything and ask question after question regarding the best time and place and way to go about it.

And of course all this building up has been more than emotional, more than discussion and contemplation, sex has been a structure, an act of creation and construction that they have built upon daily; discovery and invention all at once. They've been probing, with questing fingers and hungry tongues at least as much as with thought and discussion and it would be hard to say which meant more and ultimately unnecessary since it all comes together, coming down in the end to the truth that they want and need and hurt with the lust of it all and they _must,_ they have to come together without question.

“I want -” one says, and “I know,” the other replies and Theta says “Can I -” and Koschei says “Yes”. It reads almost like a set of lines they have written out for themselves, a set of vows, of formalities because their bodies already know these truths and respond to each other with far more than just consent but necessity too and need. Theta feels like his head is spinning, like he is falling through something soft and it's cradling him and it batters at his chest and yes it makes him hard as hell to feel how achingly soft Koschei is, how his skin feels at times like the softest underbelly of a tiny animal and then sometimes so smooth and every plane beneath that skin hard and thrumming to Theta's touch – _you're like an instrument_ he said once – _I could play you forever -_ and Koschei rolled his eyes and said – _corny!_ But he smiled all the same and challenged Theta to play him well, to make all the most beautiful sounds.

He _does_ make the most beautiful sounds and it is Theta's constant undoing to hear them, to hear how hard he struggles not to make them and then makes them all the same. He is undone every day, re-made again after sex, they pour themselves into and out of each other to taste again each time what they have become when they grow still, coming out satisfied over and over again.

Theta moves Koschei between his hands but Koschei always seems to be going there anyway, and he goes onto his hands and knees because it feels like it will be the easiest way and when Theta holds his cock in his hand, and his fingers, slick and sliding into Koschei he cannot think any more, not a single deep thought capable of existence in his head he just needs this, like nothing has ever been important before or ever will be again and he is gentle, slow because he must be but there _is_ a part of him, something dark and adult and deadly that terrifies him, that could just grab that body to him and slam inside, rutting like the animal he is, seizing, claiming and owning and no regard for if it hurts – it makes his mouth dry and his brain shriek and he does not does not does _not_ do that and the hand that guides his cock shakes but he pushes in gently, so very gently, feeling Koschei first stiffen and then breathe out, sigh and push back letting him in little by little until he's finally in all the way and he holds still for a long moment, letting Koschei adjust and forcing himself not to come instantaneously from the intense squeezing deliciousness of the sensation of being buried to the balls in another person, the person he loves and needs and has wanted to be inside of almost since they met and even though he _has_ been capable of thinking it through, beneath everything there has been nothing but this thought, this wish, this desire and he's here and it _is_ amazing and he thrusts very gently, getting used to the sweetness of the sensation, keeping stock of his own ability to breathe, his hands always moving on Koschei's body, holding his hips, stroking the spot just beneath them which drives him crazy and even now makes him push back and into Theta's thrusts and he wraps his own spare hand around Koschei's cock, and he's so hard and needy he thrusts into Theta's hand and the urgency of it makes Theta in turn rock into him harder, deeper and he feels Koschei moan beneath him like something just unlocked and he can almost feel the feeling of exquisite delight that floods him, rocking into his own pleasure and firing it and he thrusts and thrusts, biting his lip at the glorious rhythm, the inside of his head rocking to that rhythm and he's not sure how long he can last but he would also be happy if it was forever.

The first thing he lets escape his lips is a throttled “Fuck -” and he realises for the first time that a muffled string of such curses have been coming out of Koschei the entire time and he leans over him to kiss his neck and between his shoulder blades and the cursing turns into one another's names and it feels at first like a higher more sublime form of cursing, the act of utterance furthering the pleasure that caused the words to spill out in the first place and spill they do like a a foreshadowing of orgasm, a form of relief just exquisitely not enough.

And their names run together, as they stream out in a river of babble from both boys but they clash as well in a curious kind of twisted music. They really do clash; these different sounds, different roots but rolling so repeatedly off the tongue their crashing comes like waves from two different seas landing on the same shore, pushing and pulling in a way that stops being a battle and becomes a dance and there is after all a surprising beauty to be found in that music, in all this repetition raised so high above discord. The sounds that they make fall like the rhythm they set up, their movements becoming rhythmic as that tidal pull, something cyclical and violent and smooth. Theta – Koschei – over and over again rolling into a sound like _theoschei –_ one word and one of power, like an incantation, something deep and powerful roiling up from beneath the earth's surface – _Thoschei –_ like the roll of the moon and the coiling of the earth.

It is overwhelming, all of it, this earth shattering sensation, they have had so many tastes of it before but if those were tastes then this is a banquet and Theta has always been greedy, so much skin and touching and sliding and rhythm – a messy urgent rhythm but sweet, oh so exquisitely sweet all the same. He wants everything and he reaches with all of his body for everything – so much contact so much closeness it is almost invasive, almost too much, more so than the actual act of penetration but oh my god that too that excruciating awareness – _I am inside my beloved, our bodies occupying the same space –_ he has to hold that thought at bay and hold his body back from thinking it – the knowledge, the forming of those words, that idea as a sentence in his head – the amazing actuality of the fact – all enough to end him right here and now and still too soon. Also he is not sure that he ever wants this to end, he thinks – he very much suspects – that if the two of them could fuse together entirely he would be far happier – far more himself even – being the thing that that could become than he ever could be with any kind of space or separation between them. He wonders if this is normal, if everyone feels this way – this intense, this amazing, this frankly divine during sex – and really divine – he feels like a god right now, like he could make anything, break anything, wish anything into being. He is sure that other people do not, that they cannot, that the world does not have room in it for such extremity. Then he hears Koschei make a little whimpering sound of pleasure that undoes him on an entirely different, almost opposite level. It is not godlike at all, that sound, barely even human, just a blissful little animal noise that makes him cry out himself and then he's coming and seeing stars and feeling only Koschei and himself but it's _Koschei Koschei Koschei –_ that groans out of him in a torrent, tearing itself up from his heart but he can hear his own name given back to him, feel Koschei in his hand and under him coming too, adding his shouts to a world that could never for one moment be big enough for them.

He feels like an idiot for ever not having known that it was so.

Lying on his back in bed, sweaty and smiling and floating euphorically way up high above the world and through the stars he feels – different. He had heard a lot of opinion either way about whether or not one would feel different, arguments swinging between it didn't make you feel that way at all to everything changing. He's not sure it's either extreme but he _does_ feel different in a way he could not possibly describe other than to say that it is good. When Koschei finally settles his wriggling – Koschei has to wriggle for ages to ever find a position, it is one of their constant night – time mini battles – finding space in the bed for Koschei to get himself into the perfect curled up spot alongside Theta's tendency to starfish – when he finally settles down now, lying side by side which is only very just possible in the single bed – Theta voices the thought out loud -

“It _does_ feel different -” he says musingly - “Doesn't it?”

Really, semi secretly he wants to ask if it was good but he knows that that's lame and corny and that Koschei is likely to tell him so and besides he _knows_ for himself that it was good and better by far than just _good_ so what he would really be saying with the question is _was it good for you_ which is cringey and awful to the point of being inexcusable.

“Yes,” Koschei says easily and his voice is far away and dreamy but his eyes – eyes that Theta could happily see turned towards him like that at all times, positively glowing and truly golden in this light and this mood – his eyes are right here and now and it feels like they and the way he smiles is all for Theta and it feels like a gift and he says - “Different yes – but it's good. It is good, isn't it?”

The sweet innocence of the question makes Theta just have to pull him tight against him, sweeping him in and enfolding him in all his limbs despite their mutual warmth and stickiness.

“Oh yes” he breathes - “Yes, really.”

Theta beams and he feels like he beams with his whole body, though the smile alone positively cracks his face in two and he squeezes Koschei close to him _life, love everything_ he thinks and he doesn't care how stupid or dramatic that is or how young he is, he feels it and that's the point.

“Did it hurt much?” he asks in the calmer moments that follow, both of them cooling down, learning how to breathe regularly again.

“Ye-es – at first,” Koschei replies - “Then less and then -” his eyes go so big when he's excited and it is so adorable it makes Theta want to scream - “Then it was _amazing!”_ he says, grinning ear to ear, Theta can almost feel him tingling - “Do you want -”

Theta gives his _yes!_ before Koschei can even finish the question, but he cannot be embarrassed by it, not when even Koschei is being so unguarded and open in all of his expression . Then they're kissing and he's soon he's turning over and they do it all again in reverse.

Before he falls asleep Theta hears himself murmur to Koschei that he loves him, that he will love him forever. He knows that he's an idiot and a sentimental idiot at that, he knows he is _only seventeen –_ as adults never cease to remind one (at least they do when it is helpful for them to dismiss a boy's feelings, when it comes to the boring things like school and The Future and Responsibilities they're very quick with the _you're an adult now,_ funny how that works). Anyway he _knows_ he is still a child to all of this and apparently, in the heart and in the head sex makes no difference to this, different does not mean older -he knows logically that these things are not supposed to last, that he will Grow Up and Change but it does not feel true. Saying _I will love you forever –_ that's the thing that feels true, the greatest truth he has ever let himself speak, and it means everything just now that Koschei does not contradict him or try to argue the point, simply accepts it with a smile and by snuggling himself in, forehead to forehead, his arms around Theta like ivy round a tree. He is even glad he does not speak because it seems to make his acceptance of Theta's love all the truer and that's all he wants and more than he generally dares hope for.

And maybe sex does not make him feel older but the feel of Koschei's eyelashes fluttering against his cheek in the last moments before sleep – the lovely tickly tenderness of it, yes that and the tear it brings welling in his eye – that maybe does.

__x__

  
  


**Yes – CS and MA – Charlie Smith and Matteusz Andrzejewski, and yes I may have snuck in a sliiiight rant and a dash of salt about _Class_ getting cancelled early. :-P Have a nice day, for my next major fic after this one imma writing _Class Season 2_ so there :-P**

 


	12. Chapter 12

  
  


**12.**

“What does Being an Adult _mean_ anyway?” Theta ponders aloud, draped at a bizarre angle that he appears somehow to be finding comfortable with his back on one bed and his feet on the other. “I mean, why do they always say _you're almost an adult Theta Sigma it's time you acted like one_ when you're doing something fun? That's how it sounds – like when you grow up everything's miserable, and if that _is_ the case then they're not exactly selling the whole business to us, are they? Why _can't_ being an adult be fun? What's it all about, eh?”

Koschei looks at him from around his text book and shakes his head and smiles. It's always the way; they're studying – or _supposed_ to be studying, and at some point sure enough he looks up and Theta is hanging half off something asking if adulthood makes sense, or whether stars have feelings. It is always briefly irritating and then lingeringly adorable.

“Do your chemistry.” He rolls his eyes. He rolls his eyes so many times a day they start to ache by this time in the afternoon.

“ _Koscheiiii -”_ he whines - “Don't _you_ do that too. I'm trying to grumble about grown ups and there you are being one. Don't be a poopyhead.”

“A – what now? Oh never mind. Yes. Yes, it is ridiculous,” because somehow or other the utterly random things that Theta comes out with are almost always things he has pondered, often recently, himself, but just has not been certain need sharing. Just like he knows he often says the thing that Theta is wondering whether or not to say himself. Like they share one mind, albeit a mind often at odds with itself.

“Speaking of parents – well more or less – do you want to spend Christmas with us?”

Alright, he supposes it's not really the neatest lead in, but he's been wondering about the Christmas thing for about a week and with the end of term fast approaching he had to bring it up sooner rather than later and now, with even the vaguest touching upon the subject of family he has to ask and get it out.

“See I said you weren't – wait no I didn't – hang on – what?” Theta sits up as it processes.

“Christmas,” Koschei says patiently, or at least with what feels to him to be immense, even gracious patience - “Or you know – at least a good part of the Christmas hols – I mean I guess your parents will want you Christmas day but you could, I mean, come up Boxing day and stay over New Year – I already asked the parentals, and they said yes”.

Actually it had not been _quite_ that clear cut, but ultimately as close to it as made it alright for him to say it. They had reacted with no little surprise when their son had asked them if he could have a friend to stay for the Christmas holidays, partly, he supposed, because they did not know him well enough to imagine he even had friends, probably they had not even thought about it or considered it a question of any importance; but also because he so rarely asked for anything -a fact that he was quick to point out to them when it sounded like they were going to refuse him with barely a thought. Then they had hummed and haah'd for what felt like ages after hearing, on their request to hear who it was, since the Lungbarrows weren't _exactly_ their social level – their actual words – but they supposed they were just about alright, and after Koschei had agreed to spend everything up to and including actual Christmas day with them, which meant attending and a _ctually looking interested, please son_ at the pre- Christmas round of social engagements, then yes, the Lungbarrow boy could come and stay for the latter half of the Christmas holiday.

All of this, Koschei summarises with a _they said yes_ to simplify the issue and make his family look less like dickheads than Theta already thinks they are and, even though he might argue this out loud, at heart it is not an assessment Koschei could disagree with.

“Really?” Theta arches an eyebrow - “Lord and Lady Oakdown are happy to have _me?”_

“Lord and Lady Oakdown are never happy.” Koschei raises an acerbic eyebrow back. “But I would be, and they said yes and – do you think you would?”

“Yes!” Theta catches himself actually bouncing a little on the side of the bed. “I think I can speak for my parents that they'll say yes, and I won't have to miss you two whole weeks – heck I'll have to behave won't I? Will I need to _society?_ Do you need to teach me how to use multiple cutlery? Oh shit – what do I _wear?_ Can I tell them I'm your boyfriend? Oh shitshitshit -”

“Calm down Lungbarrow,” Koschei smiles crookedly, only now putting his pen down and coming over onto the bed, putting his arms around still bouncing Theta and kissing the top of his head - “Yes you'll have to behave around my parents, there may be some light socialising but I've agreed to do all the difficult stuff the first week, so chill . It's easy, you just start from the outside and work your way in, and I mean I guess smart – casual which in your case probably translates as smart smart? And no, absolutely not in no way under any circumstances, they will kill you and disinherit me.” He takes a deep breath -

“Yeah think that's about it, that cool?”

Theta beams and nods wildly and Koschei scoots up against the headboard holding Theta between his knees with his head against Koschei's chest.

“I _would_ like to tell people about us though,” Theta says after a pause. “I'm so pleased for us I want to shout about it everywhere. You're the best thing in my life – the best thing that's ever happened to me and I just – well I suppose it is daft, but I'd like everyone to think we're as brilliant as I do.”

“We _are_ brilliant,” Koschei nods but in his chest under Theta's head, a flutter of anxiety that he supposes Theta can actually feel, beating in his ribs - “You won't though, will you? I'm serious – my parents – they'd almost certainly disown me and I don't know where I'd go, what I'd do -”

“You could move in with us – my parents don't mind so much -”

“Oh my god you _told_ your parents? How does that even -” he cannot even imagine it.

“Not about you specifically but yeah, I think they knew I was gay before I did. They _may_ have a hunch about you though – and you really could, you know. Cause no offence, Kosch but your parents suck, you could do without them.”

“I -” he wishes he felt like he could - “I don't think I'd be so good at being poor.”

“We're not _poor_ you prick, just cause we don't have actual estates. Besides, you have to tell them one day, like when we get married.”

“Oh my god.”

“What?”

“Really? Are you – proposing?”

“We're seventeen!” Theta wriggles in a way that Koschei knows means he's really thinking hard. “Would you though?” His voice grows serious.

“What? Marry you? Are you _proposing_?” He does not know if this is serious or not, this whole discussion; he does not even know if he wants it to be. He wonders if Theta is in the same place because he too sounds cautious like he's still trying to gauge what level they're on -

“Would you – say no?”

His heartbeat feels so frantic it's like he has more than one, and eventually after a struggle he says -

“No. I don't think I would.” Theta seems to relax in his arms, go floppy, finish his own war with himself and decides to laugh it off – _for now,_ that laugh tells Koschei.

“It's alright Kosch, calm down, I'm not asking yet.”

Their laughter is a little uneasy, a little too aware, both of them conscious of their age and the probable silliness of even thinking about it yet but – the _but_ hangs between them like a held breath. But then again, it always does.

__x__

**I'm sorrreee – so late to update, cause christmas, and even though I've had this written for ages and I didn't get a chance to ask my beta and then I was writing a christmas special and blaaaaah. Anyway apologies aside here it is! Cause I'm going away for a week now and couldn't leave it THAT much longer – hopefully get the next one up next tuesday/ wednesday – but for sure quicker than this was! :-)**

  
  


 


	13. Chapter 13

  
  


**13.**

Heading up to Oakdown Estate for the first time feels a bit to Theta like going to Prydon on that very first day, only this brings with it a very different set of concerns and excitement. The drive up to the main house is almost as long as the one at the school and again he finds himself wishing he could be cooler about this but he's not. He strains his neck looking out the car window through the cold December rain, seeing the damp hang heavy on the rhododendrons that line the drive in rich dark green, shadowed almost black in the rain. It's hard to see beyond all the foliage and the great oak trees that line the path, shadowing the place so dark that up close Oakdown Estate is transformed from the shining red building that has always been on the horizon into a hulking Gothic monstrosity. He cannot help but gulp a little, unable to imagine what it could be like to grow up in a place like this. His father gives him a look – quite a distinctly pleased one, that tells him he has always wanted an excuse to come up this driveway on a personal level. When he asked/ told them his plan for the latter half of the Christmas holidays, his parents had been first surprised, then pleased, then pleasantly proud and excited and only then after that journey did they click and ask him if he was in fact going out with the Oakdown boy. He had been horrified by how hard he had blushed to be asked it like that straight out and had not needed to actually vocalise his reply.

He still has not decided if he is pleased with the parental approval, or if he really can't bring himself to be truly happy about it knowing that it comes more from pride in what they see as an illustrious connection than being genuinely happy for his happiness. Anyway, he has more important things to think about as their car pulls up in the driveway, and he bounces out with more bravado than he feels and up the stone steps to the enormous front door.

“Can I even just -” he turns to his dad, not knowing whether or not you can knock on a door like this; his father shrugs unhelpfully, and he shrugs too and knocks. To his surprise it is Koschei who opens the door, and within seconds, too; he can only have been waiting right beside it for him. He wonders for how long, and the thought of it alleviates his nerves more than a little.

“Didn't know you opened doors yourself, Oakdown,” he cannot help but smirk.

“I don't – generally.” Koschei arches an eyebrow, but Theta can tell the fact of it is perfectly serious. Koschei raises a polite hand in greeting to Theta's father but does not – to his relief- invite him in.

“Do you have bags?”

Theta shrugs to indicate the back pack he is wearing.

“That's all?”

“It's bigger on the inside.”

He makes his father an awkward goodbye and heads inside, trying very hand not to stare around him like the complete plebeian Koschei is bound to call him if he does.

It is incredibly hard to help it, however; the scale of building that was just about acceptable in a school is infinitely less so when really this is just somebody's _house,_ or if _house_ is not quite the right word, then abode perhaps. Just the foyer is enormous, sweeping away from him into a massive double sided curving staircase, shining marble floors and shining mahogany bannisters. He cannot decide if he is simply dwarfed by it or excited by an urge to explore; he has had dreams of playing hide and seek in a house like this. He wonders if really anyone has ever played here at all.

“Your people aren't coming to greet me then?”

“No, I told them not to. We'll see them at dinner.”

“Will I _find_ dinner?”

“Not if your track record from school is anything to go by -” they smile slightly shyly, their voices sounding loud and echoing in this vast hallway. Theta is surprised by how shy Koschei looks, as though he is afraid of how Theta will react to the place and to himself in it - “But it's cool, just stick with me.”

He follows him up the stairs, curving round to the right; a stained glass window at the far end of the corridor throws panels of muted coloured light across the wooden floors, and past the window the hallway curves round into the depths of the house behind them but they take the second door to their left, which Koschei announces is his room -

“But if anyone asks, you're sleeping in here -”

He darts out of the room quickly, showing him the room next door, and just as quickly going back into his – _their_ Theta thinks, with a sharp jolt of pleasure – room. He hopes he does not stare for too long, but it is a little like he would imagine a room in a palace to look like. He is in fact extremely proud of himself for only saying -

“You have a four poster bed. Of course you do”.

“Would you believe me if I told you that until I was twelve I thought this was normal?”

Theta sighs -

“Yes”.

After that the week flies by like a dream; for Theta it feels like he has stumbled into some kind of alternate fantasy reality in which he is suddenly royalty, he does in fact accuse Koschei on a fairly regular basis of acting like it. True to word they are not prevailed upon to join in any excessive social functions with the exception of the Oakdown Estate New Year's ball on the last day of the year, at which they slip through the crowds gently lowkey pranking everybody whilst successfully managing not to be noticed aside from the fact that Theta accidentally eats the sugar centrepiece of the evening banquet that Koschei, groaning, informs him only too late was supposed to be only for show.

“Which is _insane!”_ Theta wails - “It was delicious!”

“You ate it _all!”_

“Delicious.”

“It was nearly three feet tall!”

“And I do feel a little sick now. Still delicious.”

“I know.”

“Ha!”

“But I only licked it!”

“Ha! I thought it was sticky.”

“Dance with me.”

Koschei shakes his head and holds out a hand in a way that makes Theta feel like a princess at the end of a fairy tale.

“We _can't,_ ” he whispers, wanting to.

“Come out onto the balcony then.”

It _is_ like a fairytale. He does not think he will ever forget it. Dancing on the wide stone balcony, mostly just swaying in Koschei's arms to the music inside while the midnight fireworks go off around them. If this was a story, he thinks, it would have to end here, because how could he _be_ any happier? But he does not want to end either, he thinks right at this moment that he _can_ be this happy forever.

In the last few days before school starts, it snows, and the view from their window just makes him wonder on top of everything else if the whole week has not been enchanted, really, after all. He gives Koschei one glance and gets a nod back and they take off into the snow, running through the white spread across the fields as best they can, kicking up the soft snow into each other's faces and throwing down into it like feathers. It is just as soft, and Theta says he wishes it was warm and Koschei shakes his head in that ever tolerant manner, and says that this would rather defeat the purpose of snow and is moreover completely impossible. Theta throws snow on him, all but buries him, and threatens to just run off and they fight in the snow, rolling around in it like dogs, laughing and nipping and grunting until the pristine white field is a churned up mess.

“It looks like there's been a tractor through it.” Theta looks out across the mess they have made, impressed - “For your information, Oakdown, a tractor is -”

“Don't be a prick all your life Lungbarrow,” and Koschei drops a snowball very neatly down the back of his neck. Theta chases him into the next field trying to get him back and to keep warm. In the end they find they have run so far that they are on the edge of Theta's own house and on agreement they go in and surprise his mother who is, to Theta's real pleasure, genuinely delighted to see them and gives them hot chocolate and a full round sponge cake which they demolish “like heathens,” she says, but she says it fondly, even Koschei forgetting to be the elusive local Oakdown for a moment and stuffing his face _like a street urchin_ as he later says.

“Your parents are amazing,” he says, as they walk back through the cut through paths in fresh dry clothes given to them by Theta's mum, who to Theta's extreme amusement Koschei has not stopped referring to, including to her face, as “Theta's mum”.

“You're just saying that because cake.”

“Well what else matters?”

Theta grins because it usually Koschei who starts arguing that there is so much else that matters, it is in fact their usual source of genuine disagreement, but he would rather die than bring that up now.

“I love you,” he says, and Koschei's eyes sparkle in the bright sun and he almost seems to glitter in the snow and Theta is not sure his _I love you_ has ever been more true, and he smiles as warm as the sun and kisses him and they run hand in hand back up the last slope to the house.

-x-

After that Theta spends a large portion of every holiday at Oakdown Estate, becoming an accepted if not exactly fully welcomed guest. As the year rolls by he comes to see the place first as Koschei does and then better because he loves it without any of the associated baggage of growing up here. He can see his love's personality in these fields, in the grandeur and the secretiveness of the house. He can feel his childhood in the walls and comes to know him more through the place than he had imagined. The more he knows the more his heart hurts for the loneliness and repression of that childhood even in the midst of all this beauty and splendour and at the same time he loves everything, seeing Koschei warm out as the year goes on, become relaxed around him and their friends in a way Theta can see is a surprise to him. At the same time he sees a darkness and a superiority in the place that he cannot deny is also Koschei; sometimes there is a look in his friend's eye, like a corner of a hallway where the shadows fall forebodingly – a look, a chink of darkness that frightens him. Koschei does nothing if it is not an extreme, however monotone he may keep his voice, however mild his smiles in public, the poise and elegance and genteel cut of him – in coming to know his heart Theta knows too that everything here is light and dark, deep deep dark and blinding light with very little in between, very little that is easy to live with, when he rages it is a hurricane, when he laughs his mirth is bacchanalian. Theta is permanently swept along on the tide of him just as he suspects Koschei is swept in turn on a tide of Theta, and sometimes, just sometimes, he is overcome with a dread he likes to blind himself to as to where they can possibly end up.

And they run. Through it all they are always running. He can almost see the year flip by under the non - rhythmic pounding of their feet. It is not always to or from anything, though there is a lot they do not acknowledge, a lot to escape in the confines of Prydon and Oakdown, the expectations and socialisation forced upon that Theta will never accept or welcome into everything that makes him who he is and he feels guilty for that because he knows that Koschei has had to and in this alone he can never join him. So they run; from everything they do not want to think of to a future that cannot envisage, they run. They run just to run, to feel their strength, their power, their youth which feel altogether like blessings that will last forever and in the day this downhill hurtle through the fields is always the best, one hand in Koschei's hand, the other hand brushing the tops of the grasses as the year goes on and in summer the grasses run high and golden and they lie in this strange brief kingdom of gold half the afternoon, owning it and pretending the rest of the world does not exist.

And in the late of July and they lie here until the sun begins to sink over the horizon, it stains the fields red and the grass is burnt gold and flaming, all the colours of fire moving as it swishes beneath their fingers, and this too cannot last and they stand poised on the brink of adulthood, going into final year and the unknown that lies beyond. Everything is changing, he knows this and he knows that it is inevitable and good but it also cannot help but be scary because this year has been so good, a whole year painted in the glittering colours of the changing fields, all the colours of their lives weaving together to twist them into each other body and mind and heart too entwined to ever be apart again without more pain than he can imagine. And how can the future be better than this? How can it even keep going so well? Because he cannot picture them together through it all when he tries, but he cannot picture anything else either. The breeze that sweeps through the red grass is the only moving thing in a last summer of suspension and the boys hold their breath on the edge of the future.

__x__

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Please please take note that I have updated the tags for new trigger warnings, because tw: anxiety and related MH issues. k, and fank. :-)**

 

**14.**

“Theeeetaaaaa -” Koschei whines - “Get the door will you?”

It's nearing the end of their first term, second year of sixth form, and Theta is cranky, Koschei is cranky, their friends are all cranky on account of how cranky the two of them have been. They've been studying in chilly silence this evening, having just rowed without fighting to get it out of their systems which always leaves the room chilly and the atmosphere rigid.

“You get it.” Theta hunches over the desk, where he has been- though he would not admit it- working almost spitefully hard, purely because he so rarely does and entirely because he knows the difference from his usual behaviour will piss Koschei off even though he normally pretends to complain when Theta doesn't take his studies seriously. Anyway, that's at least half and probably more of the reason they seem to have been at loggerheads so much this term – the fact that Koschei always seems to want to study so hard, that he has been more than usually uptight about it since term started, and yes, Theta knows they have exams this year but that's hardly any excuse – as he said earlier this evening – _to be a dick about it all year through and not have any fun and frankly I don't know why I even bother at the moment._ Which meant he had not known why he bothered trying to have fun if Koschei was going to be like that, but which Koschei had wilfully translated as Theta not knowing why he bothered with _him_ and had given him the _fine don't be with me then_ to which Theta, already in too much of a mood to backtrack, had had started a brand new argument on top of their old argument about how Koschei just _had_ to twist everything he said to make it worse because basically he _wanted_ to be in a mood.

“Contrary to popular opinion -” he adds - “I am _not_ actually your servant.”

Koschei mumbles something about that opinion not being nearly as popular as it ought to be.

“It's _your_ opinion anyway,” Theta grumbles - “Are you going to get the door or not?”

Koschei drags himself off the bed like every little movement of it hurts, and grumbling, goes and opens the door.

“No-one there anyway,” he huffs, closing it with more force than it even faintly needs.

“To be fair I didn't hear anyone knock,” Theta shrugs.

“You wouldn't. You're always blissfully unaware of the world around you.”

“And you're always blissfully unaware of the feelings of anyone in it.”

“You want to do this? Shall we do this?”

Finally they fight and afterwards fuck their anger and irritation away and in the aftermath, though he says sorry and Koschei does not, Koschei does admit to him, finally, frowning, that he _has_ been ridiculously strung out all term.

“It's the exams,” he sighs - “Don't laugh at me. I know it's lame. But my parents will kill me if I don't get into Oxford and it's all riding on these results.”

“Kosch I've never known you get anything other than straight As since....forever -”

“That's not -”

“Okay once – I mean _once_ you got an A minus and you actually genuinely cried over it and said it was gonna bring down your whole average, and did it?”

“Oh shut up - no it didn't.”

“You're gonna be fine Kosch, honest, you're gonna be top of the class with everything as always, so stop worrying, okay?”

Koschei nods and stops talking about it, but only really, Theta notices in the weeks that follow, for that night. They have the same conversation repeatedly for the rest of the year and going into spring term and towards the end of January it happens again.

Theta has been noticing Koschei's distraction for weeks now. So often when he speaks to him he does not seem to hear, or he needs the thing repeated. So often when he is talking he feels like Koschei is not listening, or that he is actually listening to something else. He has seen him so many times rubbing his head and sneaking painkillers for headaches he does not elaborate on and cannot be pressed to discuss. They no longer have the conversation about how Koschei does not need to worry, partly because he is sick of it – they are both sick of it – but also because he is worried himself that just telling him how okay it all is really could be seen as belittling his feelings. He realises that it does not matter in the least that it _is_ all going to be okay and the fact is that whether or not Koschei needs to be worried, the point is that he _is_ and it is important to him. He does not know what to do and more and more even the others keep asking Koschei if he is alright, his affirmative that he is getting more and more snappish. And they are all stressed about exams – except for maybe Drax – which does not help anybody's patience.

More and more he has been seeing a look on Koschei's face – seeing him cock his head just a little to the side the way he does when he is listening to something. So many times they have had the conversation -

“What is it?”

“Can you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Doesn't matter.”

Over the last week it has been at least once a day, and when he has tried to bring this up Koschei has not even seemed aware of it.

Then it happens again – this time they are not even arguing, have not been recently arguing and are so far from being angry at each other that they're lying in bed barely dressed, Koschei half asleep with Theta's head on his chest.

“Thete -” Koschei murmurs sleepily - “Get the door.”

“Get the door what?” He blinks blearily, half asleep himself.

“Someone's knocking on the door.”

“They are?”

“Didn't you hear? There!” Koschei half sits up, fully awake now - “There again didn't you hear? It was _really_ loud.”

He gets up, unable to say or decide in his mind why he feels so concerned, where this sickening sensation of dread comes from. He hopes to hell that there _is_ someone outside, even though he really _really_ isn't in the mood for other people just now, or at this time of night, because it's gone midnight – but it is better than an alternative, the notion of which has been creeping up on him ever since this happened before. He throws the door open as if in expectation of a ghost.

“Nobody there, Kosch.”

It is clear from Koschei's face that this does not make him feel any better either. Theta closes the door gently and comes back to bed. This time he lies on his back and pulls Koschei gently against him. He can feel him frown and he waits what seems like an age for him to talk. He has no idea of what to say and he does not like it – usually he knows what to say – or not knowing, and feeling able to trust himself to go with something anyway, well that's his _thing –_ it's what he's good at. So this floors him, because he desperately wants to help but is afraid of making things worse. The more he thinks about it the worse it is because it feels like Koschei is on an edge he could not follow him down if he fell. But he can feel the frown moving across the face buried into his chest, he can feel his heartbeat, faster than it should be, feel his lips twitch on the verge of saying something over and over and then falling back and not saying.

“You – wanna talk about it?” he asks gently.

“You think I'm going mad,” Koschei says, twisting a little so his face is no longer buried in Theta but also turning it away so his expression cannot be read, typically defensive.

“That is – a vile deduction based on very little.”

Koschei snorts at this -

“Sounds like something I would say. Fine then, why not though – _I_ think I'm going mad -”

“Because that's twice you've heard someone knocking and there's been nothing there?” again he treads so softly, afraid that his voice may contain judgement or assumption that is not even there.

“It's -” he does not need to be able to see Koschei's face to feel how much this admission pains him - “It's been a lot more than two times – it's -” again he pauses and Theta can feel him wrestling with it in his chest - “I've been hearing it more and more, like all the time nearly - the same sound every time, like someone knocking four times – not even really a knock more like a drumming – over and over in my head like – dadadadum, dadadadum, dadadadum – over and over but it's not -” he stops, tapping out the rhythm with a finger on Theta's arm, and makes a huge breath - “It's not really there, is it.”

“It's there in your head, Kosch,” he says gently, knowing at least enough not to just say _no it's not,_ though he nearly does.

“Please don't say it's just because I'm stressed. I think I'll punch you.”

He suspects that it _is_ because of stress, but he had no intention of saying so and certainly not with that _just_ that diminishes it.

“I just want to know how I can help.”

“I don't _know -”_ he sounds so helpless, so frustrated with it that it just makes the wanting even stronger. “I'm scared Thete,” he whispers, hiding his face back in Theta's chest, and to Theta's horror and heartbreak he starts to cry, whimpering and gulping, fractious and messy as a child. He wants to say it will be alright, he wants to suggest Koschei get help from elsewhere, he wants to make it all go away and he cannot do anything and he hates it more than he ever hated anything and all he can do is hold Koschei tight until the shaking subsides.

Exams in May, he thinks, and then maybe it will get better.

__x__

 


	15. Chapter 15

  
  


**15.**

It does not get better.

Exams come and go, and Theta and Koschei nearly break up several dozen times over the course of them due to rows that Theta begins to wonder Koschei starts because he is trying to drive him away. More and more, Koschei seems to be burying whatever it is going on in his head underneath acting – as he has foolishly said out loud over the course of several fights- _like a complete arsehole._ And there is only so much understanding Theta can give, and for so long, when someone is almost always angry and cutting and sarcastic, even though at least twice a week he breaks about it and cries and wonders what's happening to him – Theta finds himself half out of patience half of the time with Koschei's unwillingness to accept both his or anyone else's help.

“I'm working it out myself,” he says - “It'll be better this way, if I can just learn to control it -”

But with this comes a growing obsession, Theta thinks, with wanting to control everything, and when it brushes on the verge of including him it is too much. And then Koschei's obsession with controlling what goes on in his head spreads and manifests in the extreme and pedantic organisation of his day. It feels like he is trying to almost destroy time in his urgency to break it down and force himself into a routine stricter than anything even the school with all its regulations would impose upon him. Even the act of being in charge, of having everything as he wants it, seems somehow to come hand in hand with a kind of manic chaos – Koschei's emotions fixing themselves so strongly to each little variation in his day that it is a whirlwind to even follow where his head is. And he can only imagine – and without any real success – how hard it must be for Koschei from the inside with all that noise. They fight almost all the time in the weeks coming up to exams and when they do not fight they fuck and it's different from before, more urgent, more ferocious, hungrier perhaps, and it is good but it's a whole new kind of good and in the moments after when they are still and lying together with the blood rushing in his ears Koschei is the sweetest he has ever known him and he tells him that the drums – he always calls them the drums now – are quiet, and he cannot describe the peace of that quiet coming out of such a cacophonous continuity of sound.

Sometimes he just rages, furious and loud and screaming to the sky and the walls and anyone who will listen – usually Theta – and at times like this the only thing that can calm him is Theta's own head pressed close against him and Theta's fingers rubbing at the points where Koschei says the sound hammers the loudest; _take my calm,_ he says, _hear it, let it take the noise away,_ and it does. Somehow or other Koschei tells him that it does and it calms him and he becomes, if not still and silent then at least able to carry on, which some days is all that matters.

One night, shortly before exams, they catch one of these quiet moments – this time they're on the roof – they come up here more often now, because it seems to be the best place for the ache and the beating in Koschei's head. _The world is quiet here,_ he says, and so they come here every day.

“We have to apply for uni soon,” Koschei says, looking out over the battlements without facing him.

“I know.” Theta comes and stands, slouching, next to him, side by side, both of them staring ahead into a cold and windy day, the sky depressingly grey for April and looking once again to be on the verge of rain. They do not care; Koschei would stay out here in a thunderstorm if it meant he could stay up here for longer. In fact he seems to love the bad weather.

“Do you know what you're doing yet?”

He actually thinks he finally does, but he's been worrying for weeks that Koschei will laugh at him for it.

“Maybe,” he says - “Do you?”

“Yeah,” Koschei nods. “I'm going to apply for politics, with a secondary in physics.”

Theta cannot help but make a face -

“If I asked why, would I regret it? Not the physics part, of course, but -”

“I want to do something I can use,” Koschei says. “I mean, I know you can use physics but I want to do something that will -” he sighs a little, not really wanting to say it but Theta knows he will say it anyway - “Something that will put me in a position of power. Where I can control things. Be in charge without anyone objecting.”

“There are always gonna be people objecting to whoever's in power, Kosch -” he frowns, something about this leaving a bad taste in his mouth - “But that's okay isn't it? I mean ultimate power's bad and corrupts, and people _should_ be able to object, don't you think?”

“No, I don't think I do.”

“Koschei -”

“What about you?” Koschei asks, as if shaking off that faraway feeling, turning eyes on him that look dark from lack of sleep, haunted from staring at things Theta feels he cannot see. “You said you might know what you were doing?”

He feels the hollowness of even having this conversation – like they should have been telling each other every part of their plans every step of the way as they worked them out.

“Don't laugh at me -” he says heavily because he already knows Koschei won't and he almost wishes he would, time was he would have laughed at anything Theta took seriously. Nowadays his smiles are often wicked and his laughter distant and false.

“So, I think I want to be a doctor.”

Koschei at least turns to him, smiling crookedly, an interested, bright light in his eyes and the old tilt to the head that Theta has come to rather miss.

“A doctor?”He says it as though Theta has said he wants to be a farmer. “Really? Where did that come from?”

“I just -” he knows exactly where it has come from but he does not know how Koschei will take being told. “I want to be able to help people -” which _is_ the truth, however lame it sounds - “I want to be able to cure people when there's something wrong, find new ways of doing that. I'm thinking -” he tries to make this sound especially casual - “I'm thinking of specialising in psychiatric research.”

“God, why?” Koschei sounds thoroughly disgusted with this, and it pleases Theta, that snootiness, that disdain – he sounds almost like the old Koschei again. “What's so great about helping people? For that matter, what's so great about people?” He sounds positively jealous. He always has been, any time someone even looked so much as Theta's way in an interested manner he has had a tendency to overreact, which to Theta's surprise he has never hated; truth to be told he has always found Koschei's intense possessiveness more than a little arousing.

“When I say people -” he says quickly, and Koschei looks at him with a sunny look in his eyes, a hopeful face that he really has missed, and it tugs at his heart like a rope wrapped around them both, pulling them together, and Koschei grabs his hand suddenly and impulsively, squeezing tight with such a release of tension and love that a lot of the dread that has been building in him vanishes with that pressure - “I mean you” he finishes - “You know I do. I want to help you.”

“I don't need -” Koschei begins quickly – it's like a reflex by now to deny it – but this time he fades out before he can finish the lie, because even he does not dare to ruin this moment. “You don't have to do that,” he says instead. “You don't have to decide your whole path in life based upon me.”

“Koschei -” Theta turns to face him and Koschei turns into him too, pulled by the movement of their joined hands, and he touches Koschei's face with gentle fingers that Koschei does not rebuff but half raises his arm to rest light fingers at Theta's elbow, leaning himself in to the touch - “Koschei, you already _are_ my path in life. Nothing's going to change that, and if you're lost, that path will bring me to you. There is nowhere you can lose yourself that I will not find.”

“But there are forces Thete -” the frown puckers his forehead again like he wants to believe but his nature forces him to fight - “It feels like there are forces trying to tear me so fast down a road you cannot travel – like I'm a kite in a wind that's gone wild and it's trying to tear me away -”

“Then I will be your kite string -”

“But -”

“And I will be the rock that keeps you tethered to earth. You float up there and when you do, there's no wind that could tear you away.”

Koschei smiles at him with brimming eyes and he kisses him there on the roof with the wind around them, ruffling their hair and getting into their clothes but never coming close to pulling them apart.

__x__

 


	16. Chapter 16

  
  


  
  


**16.**

Koschei arrives in Oxford with two weeks to go before the start of their first term at university and a full weekend before Theta is due to arrive. He's so excited to be here that he actually feels positive, happy too though it has been a good summer anyway.

Year thirteen, he decided when it was over was – if not exactly a write off – pretty terrible. Looking back, he just sees ten months of the most incredible anxiety and darkness and his own head plunging into a well he could barely see down. So many times he has feared to lose himself, from a niggling worry to the absolute certainty that he was already gone. The drums still haven't gone – not completely – and they return now from anything between every few days to constant for hours or even days at a time, but he's stopped lying to Theta about it and he's managed to get to a point where he knows at least that it is the noise, the utterly constant background noise that is making him anxious and angry and scared. He supposes they might never go away, and has decided that this being the case, all he can do is learn to accept them as a part of him, however unpleasant that part might be. At least talking to Theta about this stops him from vocalising an increasing megalomanic desire for control which he does _not_ allow himself to vocalise, and he's trying these days not to feel it, and sometimes it works.

At least when he looks back through all that darkness and fog there _is_ always Theta. He hates to think what he would have become – what he could still become without him. But then he's coming to think he would not know who he was without all the noise in his head either.

And this past summer has been glorious. Parents on both sides have been lenient due to their joint success regarding university – even Theta, perhaps due to his still inexplicable sudden intention for his life, worked harder than he let anybody except Koschei know and aced his final exams. Koschei _-obviously_ as Theta put it – got the highest imaginable grades and in the end they both got their places at Oxford, Theta following – though he said it had nothing to do with it – purely because Koschei had to go there and he had not had firm plans of his own anyway. They had even found a tiny student house just for two in the heart of town almost directly between their two colleges, a sliver of a house so small you did not see it until you were upon it, wedged between two much higher terraces, a place that felt like home to Koschei from his first glance at that bright blue door, and then stepping inside you expected it to be as cramped and dark as the outside suggested, but it opened up, bright and more spacious than one could have believed possible from outside. He wishes, going in for the first time, that Theta had come with him straight away after all, but his parents had demanded him for the last two weeks before term; and that was fair, he grudgingly supposed, if only because he had spent the entire summer holidays at Oakdown estate.

Even so, he decided to sleep on the sofa until Theta arrived, and anyway set out most days to explore the city and university. He was in love with the place almost at first glance, everything was golden and old and seemed to beam at him. The very walls seemed steeped in tradition but without the confines that seemed to always come with tradition as he had known it. It felt, in short, like freedom, only without being terrifying. The circular buildings and winding streets seemed to spin around him like being caught in the mechanism of a clock and moving just in time with him.

After just ten days in the end, Theta arrives unannounced. Koschei is asleep at the time – it's getting on for midday, and – while he _is_ the most studious student of his own acquaintance, that still does not stop him from starting university life as he means to go on, groaning whenever called upon to get up before noon. He goes to the door, grumbling, in a dressing gown, only for grumbles to die on the instant he sees Theta on the doorstep.

“Delivery for the honourable K Oakdown?” Theta grins, and thrusts a bunch of flowers at him. He takes them and tries to hug Theta all at once before stepping aside to let him in, which Theta does bouncing and beaming -

“Wow! It really is surprising when you step in isn't it? I think I kinda love this house! I'd forgotten how much bigger it was on the inside!”

Koschei is still beaming, and then frowning at his sunflowers -

“Say, these are kinda – I don't wanna say shitty, because you got me flowers but – did you get this half price in the garage?”

Theta laughs -

“I mean, you're supposed to say _Wow thanks Thete, flowers!_ But it's fair, I brought them back in the car on a three day journey so yeah – probably more petals in the car than on the plant.”

“You went three days to get me flowers. I dunno if you heard, Lungbarrow, but there's these wonderful things called florists -”

“Shut up -” Theta flops himself straight into the sofa space that Koschei had previously been occupying. “My folks took me back to Pont-sur-le-mer, didn't they? These are – well I picked them – you know that sunflower field near where we first -” it is a delight to see him actually blush - “You know, between the river and the lavender.”

“I remember.” He can't quite make eye contact for smiling either, and he holds the tatty bunch of flowers close, curling his fingers around them rather protectively.

“So how's Oxford? Are you wallowing like a happy pig in academia? How's your head been? Why are you sleeping on the sofa?”

“Okay first – I didn't want to baptise the bed without you.”

“Baptise? You didn't have to drown it in jizz, Kosch, just sleep in it.”

“Eww. And my head is fine.”

“All quiet?”

“All quiet.” It is almost a lie, but just at the moment it does not feel like one, so they both allow it to slip.

“Oxford is _brilliant_ though!” He sees Theta smile that smile he always does when his own eyes are gleaming, when he smiles like that he thinks he loves him the most and he loves himself a bit too - “Anywhere you go that's high up you can look down and see this amazing golden roofscape! It's like a fairy tale -”

“You've found yourself some new roof top kingdom, then?”

“You know I'm always gonna miss the one at Prydon, but you can actually get out through the attic here – not the greatest view though, we're a bit wedged in here, still, it's got its plus points, I'll show you later -” he flops down next to Theta, curling easily into his arms and putting the sunflowers gently down. They coil in and around each other with comfortable delicious ease.

“Can't be arsed right now,” he adds.

“What about the museums and all those old buildings you were on about and the library? You went on and on about them all summer.”

“So first of all -” he scrunches up his forehead - “Don't laugh at me – you know I wanted to come down before you to see everything first because you know I have to do that -”

“Basically. You have to piss all over everything and make it yours, yeah I know.” Theta ruffles Koschei's hair affectionately. Koschei does not even _mean_ to instantly smooth it down again, but he always does.

“Oh quite. I pissed all over Oxford. There's not a single unstinky corner in the whole Ashmolean. They'll be cursing the name of Oakdown for years, _anyway –_ I was gonna be cute before you interrupted and now I don't know -”

“Oh go on – you _never_ do cute _.”_

“So I said I'd do that, but actually when I was going around the first, second – all the times I was going around, all I found myself thinking was _I can't wait to show Theta_ or _I bet Theta would like this –_ then I kept opening my mouth to say stupid stuff to you about things and forgetting you weren't there – and okay, essentially? I was a total tit without you, okay. Shut up. Moving on.”

Theta cannot stop laughing and hugging him.

“We are never, _ever_ moving on.”

“But, okay, I'm not sharing the Bodleian with you. That library is mine, all mine.”

“Ahh, here it is. I knew I'd lose you to that place. You get membership?”

“First day.”

“You get me membership?”

“Get your own membership. Yeah, I have spent hours in there already. I actually got so much advanced work done just cause I wanted to sit by one of those green library lamps and study and cause I wanted not only to check books out but sit with a whole stack of books next to me and look studious and – will you shut up?!”

“So basically. You jizzed all over the Bodleian?”

“Oh my god. What is it with you and jizz right now -”

“I missed you. It's been almost two weeks.”

“You're disgusting. Ewww. And no.”

“What, you haven't whacked off in the library once thinking about stuffy old books and sexy green lighting?”

“You're the worst, Lungbarrow, and no – okay shut up -” he bites his lip, studiously avoids Theta's eye and mutters very quickly and quietly - “Okay once, and I was thinking about you fucking me in there; only very quiet fucking, okay shut up I hate you.”

Theta is laughing too hard to reply.

“I think I'm going to like uni,” Koschei says smiling happily to himself.

__x__

 


	17. Chapter 17

 

Koschei _does_ like university; actually he loves it, they find they both do. First year especially comes with none of the grief of the last year of sixth form, and the added special newness of being free from parental expectation for the first time. Theta's parents even know about the two of them living together in all of its particulars – well not _all,_ obviously, as Theta has to very quickly clarify when he mentions this to Koschei – like he doesn't draw them explicit diagrams or anything but his parents know what they are and some degree of how it is though he hugs their love very close inside himself knowing that nobody could _really_ know what it felt like who was not them.

Koschei's parents do _not_ know the truth of it; in fact Koschei tends towards a suspicion that they do not even suspect. They know only that the two friends are house sharing in a _suitably student – like manner,_ and occasionally ask him if he has found himself a nice girlfriend yet – not, to his relief, that they are even in too much of a hurry for that to happen as any potential partner would have to adhere to the very strong set of expectations, breeding and skill set deemed suitable for the Honourable Koschei Oakdown, a fact that Theta snorts at and yells -

“Me! It's _clearly_ me, don't I just fulfil _all_ the expectations of perfection Kosch?”

“Pfft. In you wildest dreams, Lungbarrow.”

They still alternate surnames almost as much as first names; partly a throwback to school and, part of a tendency with all public school friends, partly as mocking, partly as a form of affectionate endearment which sounds like insult- and partly, because they both rather get off on it.

“Except when I've got my master's degree, you can start calling me Master.” Koschei raises his eyebrow at the idea and Theta cannot quite tell if he is joking or not.

“So when I've got my PHD, you're going to call me _Doctor,_ then?”

“If that's your kink, _Doctor.”_

“No,” Koschei says a few minutes later having sat in silence, pen poised but not writing - “I don't think so. You just don't _look_ like a Doctor.”

“Well what does a Doctor look like? In your _extensive_ experience?”

“Older,” Koschei nods. “Loads older. Scarier eyebrows.”

“I _will_ be older, like seven years older at least.”

“Yeah but you look about twelve now so that'll make you nineteen – nope, it's decided, I'm not calling you Doctor until you are fully forty five and look it.”

“And I'm calling you Master in your wildest wank fantasies. Shut up, Kosch.”

The truth, though they are still young enough to be embarrassed by it, is that they _do_ look older now than when they first met, which is, Koschei reasons with himself, only to be expected between the ages of sixteen and nineteen; but still he looks in the mirror and wonders when it was that he grew. When did his face get cheekbones like that? When did his eyes get that deeper, more troubled look, or his limbs grow into proportion? Since he was twelve he remembers looking in the mirror on a daily basis, trying to watch for signs of the changes occurring that adults tell young people will occur during this age. He never saw it happen, so he cannot trust that it will. He still looks in the mirror wondering what he is going to look like when he is grown up, unable to fathom the idea that he might look like this already. He wonders if this is actually something every adult does, but it's not something they tell you about so maybe he's just weird. These thoughts, like so many of his thoughts – most of them in fact – are thoughts he can share only with Theta; and Theta, in this instance, agrees.

“Yeah,” he says. “It's true. I still wonder how I got this tall and what I'll look like when my limbs stop – I mean just stop! Can't they? I'm like an octopus!”

“They're growing longer Thete, you're not growing extra limbs, you prune.”

“I am not small and wrinkled, so your _prune_ is misjudged. Here let me get you in my many limbs.”

For a half hour they chase each other round the little house yelling and forgetting that they are supposed to be halfway resembling the adults they have talked about being.

Later Koschei will always remember those first few years of university as being the best of his life, however much of a cliché that may be. He supposes they are not normal students – everyone who knows them consider them to be exceptionally insular and suspect that they think they are better than everyone else, which they do. Some weekends and holidays Romana and Ushas come up from Cambridge to visit and they get occasional phone calls from Drax from wherever he currently is at the time – after being kicked out of Prydon in the very last few weeks of final year he went travelling and never came back, but they get random postcards and calls from hidden corners of Thailand and remote African villages and letters so badly written and terribly addressed that they laugh over what exactly Drax is on this time. But apart from that it is true; they do not feel a need for anybody else and – if they were both being honest – and in this case it is Koschei who is happier admitting it – they _do_ think they are better than all those other people, none of whom they need at all.

In third year, crisis hits when it finally occurs to Lord and Lady Oakdown to wonder about their child's relationship with _that boy._ After a hideous scene of screaming (mostly Koschei) and crying (mostly lady Oakdown) they leave having, if not _entirely_ cut Koschei off, at least made it very clear that neither of them are welcome back at Oakdown estate for a very long time, and in Theta's case never. He has to say it saddens him; he had grown used to the place, some of their best times spent roaming that building with wild abandon, running in those fields – they have even worked it into their _goodnight_ routine. It was after a long and happy talk about Oakdown estate and they way they see the place, as though the memories they both have are painted in the exact same hues – the red of the sun setting across the fields in the early twilight, the grasses red beneath them, they define freedom as those runs through the grass beneath a strawberry sky. The last things they say before they sleep, no matter how the day has been is always _see you in the fields Kosch – see you in the fields Thete._

For a long time after the Oakdown visit, things are difficult again; Theta knows that however hard it is for him it must be hundred times worse for Koschei, and of course Koschei will not talk about it or be pressed with his feelings on the matter. He locks himself away inside himself, bottling up an anger and resentment Theta can see brewing in his eyes and in the clench of his fists, the tight set of his mouth and he begins cocking his head to the side again as if listening. The way that he _listens_ spikes dread in Theta's heart.

But it seems to pass, at least as far as Theta can tell – and it _does_ worry him that he cannot always. Koschei has become so good, so practised at hiding his thoughts and feelings that he worries sometimes he could do it, even from him. But they go on, they spend their holidays travelling together – because if nothing else Koschei's parents have at least not cut him off financially, even if it diminished enough to bother Koschei if not Theta – so they travel and it has its highs and it's lows. Theta's preferred mode of travel is to just grab a tent and go, which Koschei initially agrees to but is very soon underwhelmed by campsites, communal showers, wet gear and consistently more and more curious places to piss.

“ _Temporary toilets -”_ he announces, his nose so high in the air (Theta's words) that it looks like it's heading for the stars. “I'd rather piss in the woods. I wish we _were_ heading for the stars, I bet they have better facilities”.

They always end up cutting camping trips short and spending half the holidays curled up in their house with the blue door with no wish to come out.

Sometimes they stay with Theta's parents, though this has its own combination of ups and downs. The ups are having space to run again, having Theta's mum cook for them and the adorable way that Koschei still, at twenty two calls her _Theta's mum._ The downside is the constant view from Lungbarrow farm up the slopes to Oakdown Estate, and too many times Theta catches Koschei looking out the window that way with an expression he does not like one bit, knuckles white in a clenched fist.

University feels like a lifetime, good and forever and all but over in a blink all at once and it _is_ a lifetime, it is their life together and in all its glorious highs and thundering lows it is a structure they have built into a shining and shimmering palace built for two. However much it shimmers it seems solid and when it does come crashing down – and so much of it does so fast that they are left half dead in the fallout – it is barely believable how fast it can fall apart and they do not see it coming anything like soon enough to stop it.

__x__

 


End file.
